


A Historian's Work is Never Done

by GracieinaNovel



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2018-04-01 09:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 59,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4014106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GracieinaNovel/pseuds/GracieinaNovel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coraline Quinn designed museum exhibits. That is until she is interrupted on a Sunday in an empty museum by a man waving an eagle badge and the opportunity to do something much less theoretical. Coraline has never been one for action and drama, but when the 1940's most prized citizen ends up not dead and very confused, she may just have to adjust. Slow burn Steve/OC Reviews much appreciated!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. I’ve been planning this for a while but only recently got round to writing it. The title is pending as I’m not sure it’s quite right, so any feedback would be greatly received.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy and please review or PM me or something so I know if to continue/ what people think of my OC.

Coraline Quinn had never been in a Walmart before.

Not that that should be considered all that surprising, considering that a little under 6 hours ago she had never set foot on US soil either.

Sighing, she coaxed her trolley over the threshold of the supermarket, before mentally chiding herself. It was shopping cart not trolley now, store not supermarket.

This was going to take some getting used to.

Not that it was just her blatant English-isms that were proving a little difficult to adjust to.

Six hours ago, Coraline was in her office, in an empty museum in London. Allowing for the time difference, the woman now staring in a mixture of bemusement and trepidation at the rows upon rows of unfamiliar products, would have just have been getting ready to have lunch.

Instead she was quite literally on the other side of the world, and according to her hastily reset watch, technically before her body had even arrived in her office. Despite the fact that at 8.00am precisely Coraline was only just setting foot in the store somewhere in New York State, she had already been up for easily 12 hours, at least according to her incredibly skewed body clock. 

Which would, in hindsight, explain why she was having such trouble trying to piece together not only what on earth she was doing in America at 8.00am on a Sunday, but also why she was clutching a shopping list of the most abstract list of items she had ever seen.

Number one on said list: Toiletries.

That was it.

No explanation. No further details. No precise brands or even, for that matter, any specific items.

Coraline sighed again; massaging her temples half-heartedly with one hand as with the other she guided her cart towards the looming aisle of bathroom products.

To say, however, that she had no idea what was going on would not be entirely correct.

**aAa**

The man had announced himself while she was knee deep in 19th century South Africa.

“Miss Quinn?”

Coraline jumped at the interruption, nearly knocking a rifle clutching mannequin into whoever it was that was summoning her in the process. After righting the army captain, she pivoted until she could meet the confused gaze of the source of the voice, and came pretty much nose to nose with a man in a suit who looked as if he was about to follow her into the plastic undergrowth she had been arranging.

“Yes?” She looked at the man warily while the barely awake 8 o’clock side of her tried to work out what was wrong with this picture.

The man stared pointedly at her, waiting with the ghost of a smirk on his face until the woman in front of him realised her partly concealed position behind the leaves of a pretend fern, and hopped down out of the exhibit with a slight blush.

“Sorry,” She muttered as she picked a bit of loose plastic plant from her skirt. “The museum’s closed for renovations so I wasn’t exactly expected visitors.”

“That much is obvious,” the man blatantly eyed her up and down. When his grace returned to her face, eh noticed a scowl had etched itself into the young woman’s features. She was also now clutching a walkie-talkie.

“Right, well in that case- seeing as you know that this museum isn’t open- would you like to tell me how you got in before I call the police and report you for theft?”

His smile faltered for a second, before he puffed up his chest and brandished his badge.

“I very much doubt the Metropolitan Police will have much to say to this, do you?”

Coraline looked unimpressed as she crossed her arms.

“Well I’m sure whatever joke shop you got that from might have something to say, but the police will probably laugh at you and fine you for wasting their time. Now, back to my original question. Why are you here?”

“Miss Quinn-”

“It’s Doctor actually,” She snapped as she raised the walkie-talkie again.

“Miss Quinn,” The man all but hissed. “If you so much as touch that radio again I will arrest you with all the powers that my badge bestows upon me. Is that clear?”

“Seeing as Miss Quinn is one of the most promising young minds in her field, Agent Clarke, I am sure she understands perfectly,” A new voice caused Coraline to again turn, this time to see another man- this time brandishing an American accent and a smile, walking in through the apparently unlocked gallery doors and towards them.

“I am sorry about my junior agent,” The man offered his hand, which Coraline shook in a daze. Her mind was still working through two men being in a museum closed for renovations on a Sunday when everyone else was off.

“- a little keen to show their worth.” She realised that the man was still talking, and so nodded in what she hoped looked like an understanding manner. That is until she realised that in her small moment of a meltdown in training, she had missed the introduction part of this meeting or whatever the hell it was, and so was shaking the hand of a complete stranger. Well crap.

“Um,” Good start, she chastised herself as she released his hand and searched for any clues of where to go next. “That is perfectly understandable, though what is slightly less easy for me to grasp is what you are doing in my museum and why you couldn’t just call me if you needed to talk to me so badly.”

The man smiled slightly, before gesturing behind her for the other agent to make himself scarce. Coraline took that as a sign to pick up the files she had strewn over the floor of the gallery, and once they were clutched in her arms, start to lead the way towards her office. As she reached the door of the staff area, she made no effort to scan her key card and open the door, instead opting to stare at the man until he answered her question.

“They did mention your persistence,” He muttered before meeting her gaze.

“My name is Agent Phil Coulson, as I said, and I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

“Homeland as in America, I presume?” Coraline- who was content enough to open the door now she had a name for the man in front of her – did so with a practiced flourish despite the files still taking up most of her arm space.

“Yes, Miss Quinn,” Agent Coulson followed her through the marble hallways that the museum kept its resident historian’s eyes only. “Although as an agency we deal with international situations as well as domestic ones. We are very far reaching, though some offices, like the London one the fine specimen of an agent you just met reports too, are still a little green I must admit.”

Coraline nodded as she opened the door to her office while mentally wincing at the complete tip it had become. Papers were everywhere, some taped to the walls, and others piled high on her desk and the bookshelves around it. When you were the only one working in a museum the size of a small aircraft hangar (if you counted the subterranean archives and the empty galleries) while the rest of the staff got an extended break, tidiness really wasn’t a priority- at least not in Coraline’s books.

After depositing her own wad of notes on top of what seemed to be the most structurally sound pile, Coraline turned back to Agent Coulson with a small smile.

“You can’t place too much of the blame on him,” She moved around the office as she spoke, juggling books and folders as she attempted to uncover the illusive second chair she knew had been in here when she had started.  “I pulled the Doctor card two months too soon so I’m just as bad.”

Coulson chuckled, causing Coraline to pause in her actions.

“From the work I’ve seen of yours Miss Quinn, two months is very pessimistic.”

“Oh, um, thank you I suppose. Though that isn’t how it works, I mean I have to graduate with everyone else and they can’t release degrees early so…”

Coulson held up his hand, stemming the sudden onslaught of stuttered babble.

“Your doctorate aside, Miss Quinn, S.H.I.E.L.D has been monitoring your work since you submitted your plans for the Smithsonian in January.”

January? God, she could hardly remember what she had being doing last week, let alone four months ago. 2012 had been a big year for Coraline. She had finished her dissertation for her doctorate in modern history- which was now pending results- and had submitted designs for museum exhibits that had been positively received in multiple countries. 

Her first major project- Sokovia’s National Museum’s redevelopment brought about in light of a brief period of economic austerity- had meant she had spent two cold months from January to March in the war scarred capital.

 On her return, she had found that her job at the National Army Museum in London had been moved forward a month due to building work starting earlier than had been planned, so she had had to shift from a century of political turmoil to nearly 400 years of specific battlefield knowledge in under two weeks in order to plan and physically renovate the top three galleries worth of history that she had been assigned.

 By the end of March, with her role just starting to feel normal, she had gotten a transatlantic call at 10 in the morning to congratulate her on being the chosen applicant for a set of designs she had sketched on the sparing nights she had had off to spend in her dilapidated rented apartment in Sokovia. The subject: the propaganda success and literal legend that was Captain America.

 With the 70th anniversary of his disappearance being only 3 years away, the Smithsonian in Washington DC had requested ( in a very small circle of academics and museum curators) a completely new and incredibly tourist friendly exhibit to capitalise on the anniversary’s publicity. She’d only even seen the request because a professor at her University had slid it to her under an essay he was returning to her, and it was with his wink and one semester’s worth of fascinating classes on the man and his faithful companions that she had sketched, written and doodled her way into getting a contract with the frickin’ Smithsonian, any historian’s fantasy, to make her scrappy ideas a reality.

Not that any of that was happening soon. She was due to fly out (once she had gawked enough at the cost of flights for her poor bank account) at the end of 2013. The entire concept for the exhibit wasn’t being released to the public until early 2014, so it was no wonder that she could only remember this particular aspect of her work when she was prompted by the agent in front of her, which was when her suspicions were renewed for a second time that morning.

“We were particularly impressed by your work for the Captain America exhibit at the Air and Space Museum, well, I was at least, I can’t wait until it’s opened formally, it really was brilliant-”

“How did you access those blueprints? They’re top secret and I hardly think whatever agency you work for are in dire need of them enough to seize them.”

It was Coulson’s turn to look slightly flustered. He ummed and ahhed for a few seconds before Coraline raised an eyebrow and he sighed.

“I had one of my team find the documents for me,” He admitted. “Not that that’s important right now, Miss Quinn.”

Ooh low blow, Coraline thought to herself as she smiled. Pulling the serious government agent card right when she had him on the ropes. She was about to remark as much when she registered Agent Coulson’s solemn expression.

“What are you really here for Agent Coulson,” She said softly.

“They found him,” Coulson’s words were sincere, the excitement gone from his tone. “They found Captain Rogers, and they want you to plan his funeral.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again. Thanks to all those following and so reading. Please do let me know what you think of Coraline. I want to make sure she doesn’t end up Mary Sue-ish so any feedback would be really helpful.   
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

As she stared forlornly at the rows of toothpaste brands each claiming to be the best for cavities, enamel damage, plaque reduction; one hand ghosted up to her forehead before tenderly touching the butterfly-taped cut that receded into her copper hairline.

Despite the gentleness of her touch, she winced- more from the memory than from the physical pain. Lord knows they’d pumped her full of enough mystery substances to eliminate that means of complaint.

**aAa**

Coraline stared at the man in shock.

“Whaa?” was her oh so eloquent reply.

“Given your knowledge of the subject and the… uh… flair you have exhibited in designing poignant and meaningful exhibitions, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division would like you to organise the funeral of Captain Steven G. Rogers in a way that can maximise the publicity angle and also make the US government enough money from merchandise to fund some ill-advised scheme in the Middle East.” Coraline could detect the bitterness in Coulson’s tone, but was too busy chewing the inside of her lip in an attempt to calm the nerves that had inexplicably sprung up inside her at the mention of governments and agencies she had never heard of .

Coulson sighed as he observed her sudden tenseness.

“I don’t agree with it personally, but it’s what the people in the gilded offices want so here I am,” he gestured around him half-heartedly, knocking over a pile of papers in the process.

Coraline winced before swooping to pick them up. Coulson went to help, but was stopped by a cough from the doorway. Coraline stopped to in her slightly frantic scrabbling to collect all the loose sheets of paper that had somehow spread the length of her office as they fell. On looking up at the source of the cough, the papers were once again dropped as she abandoned her task in favour of backing up against her desk and trembling.

_Agent Clarke was in her office. Agent Clarke was in her office holding a gun. In her office. Her absolutely 100% secure office. Yet he was here._

The small part of Coralline’s mind that remained even remotely calm as she brought her knees up to her chest chastised the larger panicking part for losing it so quickly.

She had been doing so well, safe in the knowledge that her office was behind a locked key card required door, and that whatever the man in the suit with a friendly smile could throw at her couldn’t be outside her history clad comfort zone. But then Clarke had returned with the same smirk and an entirely new weapon that wasn’t pointed at her but what did it matter, he still had it. And all of a sudden the jarring, wheezing familiarity of four years of barely concealed panic attacks was back with a vengeance and breathing had become a thing of legend.

Clarke paused in his dramatic entrance enough to smirk at the historian that had gone from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, before a sharp “Hey!” from Coulson forced him to focus on his original task.

“He’s not dead.”

“What?” Coulson was only half listening, one eye still watching as the woman now looking the age she was rather than the age she usually acted as she curled in on herself against the backdrop of her desk.

“Captain America, your favourite man,” Clarke’s underlying scoff was enough to get Coulson imagining just how much blood could ruin historical documents, but he held himself together as he registered what the obnoxious twit was saying.

“Alive?” God he hoped he’d managed to keep the slight desperation out of his voice, because even if inside his head was going a mile a minute trying to comprehend that Captain America, _the Captain America,_ was alive.

“Yeah, apparently they defrosted him and he took half the New York office for a run around Times Square,” Clarke had returned his gaze to Coraline, pointing his gun in her direction just to watch her shy further away from it.

Coulson was ready to deck him at this point, his hands curling into fists as he took a step closer.

“Right,” His tone was steely, “In that case we can stop bothering Miss Quinn here.”

He moved as if to lower Clarke’s hand and with it the gun, but the younger agent moved out of reach as his smirk grew.

“Oh no. The head office wants her too. NO idea what for, I mean, what use could she be, but still. Fury’s orders.”

Coraline had been registering the conversation, but barely. However while putting most of her energy towards trying to control her breathing, just enough of her energy was being exerted into groping behind her on the floor and finding the largest book she could feasibly hold in one hand.

Which was why, as Clarke holstered his weapon and made a move towards the quietening woman on the floor, he instead met his own date with the carpet by means of a book on woman in Nazi Germany hitting his nose with a crunch.

Coraline was up and out of the office before Coulson had crossed the room. After the initial adrenalin tapered out – just as she was sprinting through twentieth century France – Coraline realised that running wasn’t as successful a plan as she had thought. True in the spur of the moment her flight or fight instinct had offered a little bit of both and a quick getaway, but two floors down and the lack of oxygen she had already been having problems with came back full force as she all but fell against the cabinet displaying the Victoria Crosses of four fatally brave World War One soldiers.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God…” She panted as her eyes darted to either end of the corridor she was in. There were men chasing her, in the museum. In the empty museum, with the doors that were mostly locked apart from the blaringly obvious main entrance.

Pushing herself off the cabinet, Coraline instantly regretted her decision as the world swayed dangerously to one side. Clearly her body was reminding her of the predicament that had put her against the display cabinet in the first place, which was considerate of it if it were not for the sound of footsteps coming from a door to her left that really contradicted the impending need to sit down and breath for a bit.

As the footsteps entered the corridor – and it was Coulson, the ‘friendly one’ with his hands raised in submission which would have been nice if were not for the fact that his raised arms only highlighted the weapon concealed at his belt more – Coraline whipped round to run the other way.

She managed all of two steps before the velocity at which she had turned led to a hard impact against the chest of the other agent. She had a brief moment to notice the blood running down his chin, before her feet’s last ditch attempt to flee turned her again to the left, and right into the display case.

Coulson watched as the woman’s head met the glass cabinet, and sighed and lowered his hands as she hovered for a second before sliding forwards into a slump.

Clarke sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve before roughly grabbing the unconscious woman and handcuffing her before lifting her to her feet.

He smiled at Coulson, the maliciousness in his eyes only accentuated by the blood dying his teeth and chin crimson.

“There,” He hefted the unconscious woman further into his grip as he turned to leave. “That wasn’t so hard was it?”

Coulson sighed as he looked at the cabinet and its petite blood stain, before his gaze widened to the empty museum as the footstep shuffles of Clarke and his unwitting companion become softer in the silence.

“Yeah,” Coulson muttered reached for his phone. “Simple as pie.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you intend to make a habit of disfiguring my agents, Miss Quinn?” Coraline jolted into consciousness, and immediately regretted the sudden movement as her neck complained stiffly as it was moved from its cricked position leaning against a table top.

The light of the room wasn’t blinding, but the darkness dancing across her vision forced it in and out of her retinas as she blinked to clear it, and the resulting ache across her temple was protesting to having her eyes open, let alone having to work against a strobe light pointed in her general direction.

Coralline’s mouth felt dry, her body not quite her own. She was so far beyond confused she couldn’t even start to work out what didn’t feel right, what wasn’t quite normal.

That was until two photos were thrown down in front of her. Instead of staring at them – something her head was most definitely protesting the idea of, she went against the shouts and twinges of her muscles to find the source of the voice. Sure enough, to her left a man in a long black coat was flanked by two other men. All three looked suitably unimpressed with her, or at least she guessed unimpressed. Specific expressions were hard to distinguish when nothing would focus properly.

As Coraline squinted up at the main man through her headache, she noted his dark skin and his even darker expression. However this small moment of clarity in her otherwise still hazy world clearly sapped whatever strength reserves she had been depleting, because to accompany her observations, all her mouth could manage was a mumbled groan, followed once she had breathed a little bit by a :  


“What?”

The man took a seat next to her, and waited for her wavering eyes to return to his face before continuing.

“When attempting to discuss a potential job with you, Agent Clarke suffered a broken nose at the hands of one of your encyclopaedias. Once you were necessarily subdued, you’re returning to consciousness aboard one of our private jets resulting in another agent suffering a similar fate this time by your innate struggling.”

Coraline directed her attention to the photos in front of her, which sure enough did show two slightly put out looking agents sporting bloody noses.

“Oh,” She murmured under her breath, while a hand reached out to touch the throbbing mark on her own head. Wincing as her fingers made contact with a raised gash stuck together by small plastic strips, Coraline’s eyes widened in realisation.

“Hold on,” The man opposite her looked up at her outburst. “Clarke wasn’t offering me a job; he was pointing a gun at my face, completely unprompted. Two strange men in my office one of them just waiting to pull the trigger; what were you expecting me to do?”

The man looked riled momentarily, before his stern demeanour returned.

“And the other agent, the one that was most certainly trying to help you when you became distressed on the plane?”

“I...uh… I don’t remember that,” Coraline looked at her hands, while bringing her bottom lip between her teeth. The man sat back in his chair across from her and crossed his arms in apparent victory.

“Wait,” her outburst was panicked this time. “Plane? What plane? Where am I? And who are you? And what’s going on? Why was there a plane?”

The man put his hands up in as placating a gesture as he could bare himself to do.

“Miss Quinn, there is no reason to be alarmed-“

“Don’t start a sentence like that, now I’m definitely alarmed,” She interrupted as she wrung her hands fretfully.

“Miss Quinn,” He continued, undeterred. “You are currently in New York City, America. You were flown under S.H.I.E.L.D protection from London and arrived here in the early hours of the morning.”

S.H.I.E.L.D. She recognised it – from the nicer agent. His face was hazy, as was the rest of her memories of the morning, but small flutterings of memory were returning in dashes and dots behind her eyes.

_“…the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division would like you to organise the funeral of Captain Steven G. Rogers…”_

_“He’s not dead…_ _defrosted him and he took half the New York office for a run around Times Square”_

_“The head office wants her too”_

Coraline assumed the man in front of her was still talking, but any lingering politeness had to be pushed to one side before the memories formulating some kind of understanding slipped away again.

“So, it must have been embarrassing for you,” She watched his blank expression and mirrored it in her own features as she continued while forcing back a smile. “Being outran by a 70 year old I mean.”

The man in front of her laughed, before directing his attention to the silent agent standing at the door of whatever room she hadn’t noticed she was in.

“Coulson wasn’t wrong. She is smart,” He then turned back to her, his hand outstretched. “Coraline Quinn, welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D. I am the agency’s Director but pleasantries we can skip. Let’s talk history.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 already. My updating schedule will soon not be as good, as study leave is nearly over, but for now I hope you all enjoy the rapid writing. This chapter was quite a bit shorter than previous ones as I was trying to avoid dull chunks of dialogue. Any thoughts on how that turned out/ whether I should go back to longer chapters would be very helpful to hear.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.
> 
>  
> 
> Thoughts? Questions? Criticisms? Reviews very welcome!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. Thank you so much to those who have subscribed or left kudos – I am so happy that people are reading and I suppose enjoying my little tale. The actual meeting between the Captain and the historian is coming up in the next few chapters, so keep a look out. For now the Walmart conundrum is finally solved.   
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> As always enjoy, and please do review to let me know your thoughts.

It turned out that when Fury said he'd like to talk history, he actually meant for Coraline to take what was essentially a glorified pop quiz on all aspects of social history from the 1940s onwards. After seeming happy with her answers- and so he should be considering her Masters had been a yearlong course of lectures on that exact subject, he’d replaced the photos with another file and an accompanying pen.

 

The papers that had been all but thrown in her direction were mostly having to be signed confirming confidentiality and complete cooperation; along with the interesting addition of what looked like a 7 year olds guide to rehabilitating soldiers.

 

All of which struck as a bit odd for Coraline as the last of whatever they had pumped her full of wore off for her to find her mind completely clear if not with a few pertinent gaps, in the carpark of a Walmart god knows where in upstate New York.

**aAa**

 

Coraline looked at her _cart_ scornfully as she resurfaced from her somewhat lethargic thought pattern. She's made it past toiletries while operating on the basis that the own brand stuff all had the same packaging and so could be swept into her cart in one fell sweep.

After sweeping her hair back away from her face, she kissed her teeth in frustration as the next item on her now crumpled shopping list was even vaguer.

‘Enough food for a week minimum.”

Gee if only there were a few less details, she thought as she grumbled her way towards groceries. I am practically swamped in information; it’s almost too much for me to work from.

Stopping at the first aisle of unfamiliar packages, Coraline sobered up enough from her disgruntled inner monologue to process what was actually being asked of her.

Captain Steven G. Rogers, recently unthawed and completely unprepared for the ways of 21st century life, was due to be moved to his own S.H.I.E.L.D issue apartment in two days. Before that, everything that wasn’t orderable from a catalogue needed to be purchased, and for some ungodly reason they had chosen Coraline Quinn, a British historian, as the one to do the shopping.

That was why she was in a Walmart at 8.00 on a Sunday. Because this grand organisation of secrets and dark suits had decided that she was the perfect candidate for whatever job this was, and had let her sign her life away while coming off a high from whatever it had taken to get her from London to New York without a fight.

Not that that was in any way legal, and not that that in any way mattered. She was here now. She had a job to do. And it started with crackers.

She was two aisles further along in her jetlagged quest when she was stopped, this time by a hand on her arm.

She flinched and spun round- nearly taking out an end display in a process. As she looked up at the arm-toucher, she had to do a double take, and then resist the temptation to knock that display over after all.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She all but hissed.

Agent Clarke mocked hurt, putting a hand to his chest as he met her with the same smile she’d seen before he’d pointed a pistol in her direction 6 hours before.

“Where’s that British charm gone now, Doc?”

Coraline pinched the bridge of her nose, before looking back up at the man purposely towering above her when she realised his accent had disappeared.

“Wha-?” She started before she was interrupted.

“Oh keep up Doc,” The distinctly American Clarke drawled. “If what your file said is true your mind exceeds your frankly dull personality by far. If you were in any way lucid in your flight over you would have worked out my accent was too polished hours ago.”

“It’s not your accent that doesn’t fit, Clarke,” Coraline stepped out from under his glare, and stared at the shelves in front of her to escape his gaze. “No one in England is that gung-hoe about weapons. Plus when your nose is bleeding your vowels get gunky. You were American for the first five minutes of the plane journey – whether you were trying for Received Pronunciation or not.”

Clarke scoffed as he followed her, his strides overtaking hers with ease.

“You’re bluffing, which is dumb, even for you.”

Anger flared in Coraline’s eyes, but she brushed it off as she bit her lip and turned the corner into the next aisle.

“Do you have a reason for following me across the world Agent Clarke, or is my charm and superior intellect just that entrancing?”

Two can play at that game; Coraline smirked inwardly as she scooped more things into her cart.

Clarke choked on his smirk momentarily, before gathering whatever dignity he could muster as he put his foot in front of the trolley wheel.

“Geez Doc,” He surveyed the cart’s contents with distaste, “Are you trying to kill the Captain with blandness. He’s been frozen not assaulted by a spice rack.”

Coraline raised an eyebrow at the man in front of her. Well, he asked for it, she rationalised as she drew in a breath.

“The diets of soldiers in World War 2 were varied, with the concept of protein rich and carbohydrate filled diets starting to filter its way into corp cuisine. However rations didn’t always get through and even when they did it often consisted of dried food: crackers and powdered coffee being the highlights. While I am sure Captain America had rations – though judging by his size and ...uh… enhanced capabilities probably never quite enough,  not that he’d complain – the richness and variety of today’s cuisine will be not only overwhelming but significantly likely to cause stomach irritation simply because of the unknown or at least unfamiliar flavours and ingredients. Therefore, “And she waved a box of crackers at him at this, “Basic foods are required that will not impede digestion and will be familiar yet still nutritious and able to be used for further diet integration in the future.”

She smiled as she finished her spiel, before manoeuvring herself and her cart out and away from Agent Clarke.

He stood- completely out of place in his rumpled suit and slightly flabbergasted expression in the now empty aisle of Walmart.

“You have 10 minutes,” He shouted after the vacant historian.

She poked her head back around the corner, concern clear in her eyes even from his distance.

“Until what?”

He strode past her, passing her a credit card nonchalantly on his way.

“Well Miss Quinn, someone’s got to put all this stuff away.”

Coraline hung her head back and groaned, not even caring how much of a kick Agent Clarke was clearly getting out of it.

Why her?

Of all people, why her? There were certainly historians in America- and for certain there were more competent historians in this country on the subject of American troops. Hell, even a current rehabilitation worker for troops would be able to do this job.

She was a historian, a British historian. Her specialities concerned British history- and yeah she knew a lot outside of her specialised field, but what did any of that matter when all she was to this S.H.I.E.L.D agency was a personal shopper and apparently their newly employed interior designer.

Her head hurt. There was too much idiot in the room courtesy of her friendly neighbourhood Agent Clarke, which was only making it worse; and as she grabbed a few last minute items and headed towards the tills, she was reminded again about how much this situation was not only alien but completely and entirely unwanted when, from somewhere in the depths of her coat pockets: the alarm that reminded her to eat lunch went off with gusto.

Coraline Quinn looked at her pockets, then at her trolley, then around her at the slowly busying supermarket.

Biting her lip to try to quell the ache of tears in her throat, she placed her shaking hands firmly on the cart and pushed it towards the checkouts.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again. Thanks to everyone who read the last chapter and those that subscribed or gave it kudos. This chapter is one of the longest and was actually where the idea for this story started, so I hope that it flows well and isn’t laborious to read. I researched a bunch of stuff to make sure this was authentic so any historical facts about objects and when they came into being are true. Any feedback is, as always, appreciated.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

As she was pushed through the door by Agent Clarke’s glare, the dappling of the weak New York sunlight caused droplets of dewy summer day to dance across the faded carpet.

She watched the beads of light scatter as the shadows of the door shutting behind her chased them back to behind the window, before she put down the grocery bags carving welts into her fingers and took in the rest of the apartment.

It was nice, she supposed. Dark and beige and dreary, but OK size wise and she was sure for near central Manhattan it was much better than the average.  Boxes formed cardboard turrets everywhere where there was enough room to stack them, but despite their obvious infringement on the shape of the room, she could still identity a desk in one corner and a small kitchen shadowed in the other. After reintroducing the red marks on her fingers to the bag handles, she knocked a light switch with her elbow and started her cautious advance through the box town turrets.

On reaching the nearest counter and again depositing the bags, she looked back around her at the now slightly brighter room.

And then she sucked a gasp in through her teeth.

A closer inspection wasn’t even needed to see that someone had already left a sizeable amount of stuff in the flat. The stacks of boxes – none of which appeared labelled to her barely concealed horror – were piled full of stuff.

Some appeared to hold books, all with faded yellow pages and curled corners. Another appeared to come straight out of someone’s garage – or perhaps a cellar of a building that had collapsed in the 50s with everything still inside. Coraline’s eyes widened as the historian side of her squealed in glee. Some of the technology in that one box had been on the museum’s wish list for years. Her fingers traced the dial of a rotary phone as she peaked underneath it and almost verbalised her inner excited thoughts as she recognised the ivoried keys of a 1940s typewriter.

“Ok, Cora, concentrate,” She muttered to herself as she forced herself back over to the abandoned groceries. “Focus on the task and then you can go home.”

As she put the now very meagre looking amount of food into the respective fridge and cupboards, she chastised herself for slipping back into the habit of talking to herself. Not that that was unusual. Everyone talked to themselves at one point or another, but as far as she was aware dedicated arguments in locked rooms with only yourself to listen were a little beyond normal, and after getting that far once in the midst of a particularly stressful semester, Coraline wasn’t too keen to encourage the habit even a little bit.

Sighing, the young woman rested her head against the cool door of the fridge, while internally her brain scrambled for a plan.

Unpack the food. Check.

Destroy the cardboard castle in the living room. Eh.

Cora glanced at the less than enticing living room, before rooting through the near empty shopping bag until she found what she was looking for.

In one hand she clutched a 20 pack of biros.

In the other: 1000 yellow post it notes.

**aAa**

Steve Rogers was tired. He was tired and irritable and sick to death of being asked over and over the same questions while receiving the same looks as if he was in a zoo and his caged box was the prized exhibit.

The act of opening the door with a key was foreign to him. After signing up, after the serum, doors were either already opens, opened for him, or his for kicking down. He couldn’t remember the last room he’d owned with a key, let alone using a key to open a door to one. It had probably been back before the war had started, before Hawaii had taken a pounding and America had sworn revenge.

The last time he had used a key, he realised with a small slither of horror, as he opened the door, was in 1940, before his mom had died.

After that the door had always been open at Bucky’s –

Steve shook his head as if to clear the memory away and opened the door.

The apartment was dark as he shut the door behind him, making the one light on even more obvious.

Cautiously he crossed the room to the lamp that illuminated a small circle of the countertop. On the counter – in the glow of the light’s orb – a small square of yellow paper was stuck to a closed manila folder.

Steve unstuck it from its position – hesitating again at the unfamiliar tackiness on his fingertips. Directing the lamp light onto the paper’s surface, the scribble scrawled writing on it became clear.

‘Hello Captain Rogers. I was the one to organise your apartment, so I’ve labelled some things to help you out. You might want to turn on the main light -C.’

This was completed by a large arrow being pointed back towards the door.

Not knowing what else to do, Steve followed the arrow’s direction back towards the door, and groped around for the small lever to pull that would bring light back into the room. When he didn’t find it he sighed and leant against the wall in exasperation.

A slight click at his shoulder had him internally cursing for already having broken something and why the hell couldn’t they just tell him what these things looked like. When the room was lit up, he paused in his internal monologue.

Huh, so the click was the light switch?

He shifted off the wall as his eyes rapidly got used to the brightness. As the minuscule white dots faded out of his vision, he noticed the clock across the room.

3.00. And judging by the unique yellowed grey of a New York night, it wasn’t the afternoon.

He switched his attention from the clock as he realised that the yellow tint wasn’t just behind the curtains.

The apartment was clean, orderly and entirely bland. Sealed boxes were piled up on the kitchen work surfaces and the small table to his left. More appeared to be stacked against the corners of the room, and on the bookshelves to his right.

Not that that was what caught his attention.

No, his attention was entirely captured by the hundreds of little yellow squares with black ink strewn across them that appeared to be stuck to everything in the room.

One such square fluttered to the ground behind him as he stepped away from the wall completely. He picked it up delicately, avoiding the sticky end this time.

‘It would probably have been easier just to start with this light, huh? This is a light switch. A little different to what you are used to, but works the same way – C’

The corner of his mouth formed the beginnings of a smile, something so foreign to him at the moment that he soon dismissed it.

Instead he walked to the nearest yellow square attached to the wall next to the door and squinted at the writing on it.

‘These are Post-it Notes by the way. Invented 1974. –C’

There it was. Just another in the long line of slaps in the face that reminded him that he was so far from anything familiar. He gritted his teeth as he followed the Post-it note arrow to the left again.

‘Sorry if that was a bit sudden to announce. It must be pretty tough being in your position. –C’

“Yeah, C,” He sighed as he scooped the Post-it notes into his palm as he continued to read. “Just a bit.”

‘Coffee in the kitchen. Will help. –C’

Not having a better idea, he crossed back to the kitchen, bumping another light switch tentatively to add a little extra illumination this corner of the apartment. Sure enough, this corner was also covered a light layer of yellow squares. Obediently, Steve found the one marked coffee and then paused again, not knowing whether heating water was different.

An arrow answered his question to a post it notes with smaller arrows around it.

‘Kettle works on electricity. It’s already filled with water. Just push down the little blue lever and wait until it pops back up. –C’

He followed the instructions, and jumped slightly as a gurgling noise broke the silence of the room. Chiding himself for his own jumpiness –you’ve knocked Hitler out over 200 times dammit – he scanned the cupboards at head height till he found the right one.

‘Mugs – C’

Thank you C, he thought as he chose a mug from the diverse selection of white china or white china. He enjoyed a moment of satisfaction as he spooned some instant coffee powder into his mug. Spoons hadn’t changed and C had left one in a mug for him. Coffee powder had been all but a staple in rations, so here were two things in this unfamiliar world that were normal - friendly.

The large silver box emitting light whirring noises was not friendly, at least not in how it looked. The post it notes for this one was much appreciated, just to give the soldier some context as to what the hell he was looking at.

‘Refrigerators. Also called fridges. Keeps things cold – started to become common at the end of the 1940s. –C. Milk inside.’

The cold was unpleasant. Not that he remembered going into the ice, not really, but the slight prickling of coolness on his arms as he opened the door and reached inside for the again labelled milk was not a comforting feeling by far.

He did, however, pause when he realised that aside from the milk and some orange juice – a fruit he barely remembered the taste of ,what with rations and the Depression restricted any foods to what was edible and cheap – there was also a few other glass dishes of foods in the fridge. He picked up the label for the first one, the poor handwriting getting easier to read as he got used to it.

‘Shepherd’s Pie. I don’t think this is a common American dish today, so you probably didn’t have it either. It’s lamb mince and vegetables topped with potato. Cook in oven. Stick to army rations for now. Maybe try it tomorrow – C’

Steve hummed as he replaced the sticker on the dish. He wasn’t hungry – didn’t really remember what hungry felt like. Still if it had been made for him, it would be rude to waste it. Especially when he knew others would have cried to see it wasted back Then.

The little lever on the kettle popped, and sure enough the water that he poured over his coffee grounds was boiling. Steve added milk and stirred, before taking his too hot coffee over to the desk across the room.

The boxes that had seemed chaotic at the time now seemed organised. He noticed that while the first two were open, the other five were taped down. A number of post it notes on the wall above them, each baring one letter each, spelled out ‘Technology’.

On closer inspection each box had a decade in big letters written on it in thick black ink. Of course each also had a post it note attached.

‘Technology: 1940s. Stuff you might have seen, some maybe not. I’m sure you will work it out quickly. –C’

He didn’t look into the box, instead moving to the next one, almost eagerly though he denied himself that emotion in light of how unpleasant his overall situation currently was.

‘1950s: Highlights include transistor radios, liquid paper to white out mistakes on typewriters, also the hydrogen bomb though I doubt they put one of those in here –C.’

He chuckled at this one despite himself, C’s slightly dark humour getting to him even where the always familiar taste of coffee couldn’t. He picked up the next yellow square, hoping for more of the same, for a little more reason to laugh to get the dust out from the cracks in his brain where bitterness had entrenched itself.

‘1960s – Do the first two boxes first. Someone should help you with anything from here onwards. –C’

His inklings of humour dissipated at this. Back to reality and the organisation with a bird logo that wasn’t the SSR and never would be.

He continued reading the next post it dejectedly.

‘I don’t know who it will be that will help. I’m sure I’ll have to write a report or handover or something as I am meant to be in London tomorrow for work at 9.00am. –C’

London? C was British perhaps. Like Peggy – no, he didn’t want to think about that. He crumpled that note in his palm forcefully, ripping the next one from the table instead.

‘Hopefully they’ll be nice –C.’

He softened a little at this, but the ruthlessness at getting through all these notes hadn’t changed, as that note was dropped and the next one – this time stuck to the pile of stacked boxes on the bookshelves against the wall – was yanked off.

‘I organised the stuff in these boxes as it looked as if anything pre-2000 was boxed up and sent here. The open boxes in your bedroom are things I thought you might want. Your army uniform is there too. I didn’t touch that –C.’

He exhaled shakily at this, a mixture between anger and sadness. In a few strides he was at the entrance to the door marked bedroom by another of those stupid yellow squares. That to was ripped off, as the soldier opted for the opposing room. He didn’t even read the door, because clearly it was a bathroom and how stupid did C think he was if he couldn’t work that out by himself.

He opened the one cupboard in the bathroom, eyes scanning the labelled products, reading but not really taking it in.

‘Toothpaste- 1950s invention but I think you had something similar –C .’

He had to bring the paper closer to read the tiny and even more scribbled footnote to that post it.

‘This is not what I thought my Masters would be used for!!’

He didn’t let himself enjoy that small moment of humanity from the post it note person, instead moving on silently.

‘Soap, bottled and a bar. I’m fairly certain you don’t get to Captain in the army without knowing how to use soap –C.’

‘First Aid kit – I’m sure you know how to use it, but if not just follow the instruction booklet. Or alternatively, don’t get hurt–C.’

‘Deodorant. Spray/ read instructions. I draw the line at explaining this to a grown man - C.’

He stopped at this, clutching the post it as he leant against the cool of the bathroom tile. He breathed in and out a couple of times, calming himself slowly. With movements that didn’t feel like his own, he walked into the bedroom, his bedroom he supposed, and bypassed the uniform he couldn’t quite bare to see on its display model, instead going straight for the closet built into the wall.

 ‘Clothes inside. I sorted through these too ( I hope you don’t mind too much). I tried to keep it to things you might actually wear, but the rest is with the rest of the decorations in your spare room –C.’

The Captain didn’t bother to look inside. Clothes, or at least the one C had picked out for him, didn’t change. At least he hoped not. And if they did, he really didn’t want to deal with that now.

He crossed back to the bed, eying it warily with all its pillows and bed linen and sheets.  He really doubted he would be getting much sleep tonight – or this morning as he supposed it was now. Especially not with that cushioned monstrosity for a resting place. Dirt in Hitler’s backyard would have been more comfortable.

He huffed as he groped at the wall for the light switch for the smaller light perched on the bedside table. That is until he saw the post it attached somewhat precariously to the cable leading out of the light stand.

 ‘Bedside lamp. Turn on at switch on cord – just like a normal light switch –C.’

He did as was ordered and the light flickered into life. Its glow illuminated one solitary note on his pillow.

Let me guess, he thought as he unstuck it from the too soft fabric: Pillow. Put head on.

 ‘Goodnight Captain Rogers –C.’

Steve smiled and rather than leaving the last yellow square with the wad of the others in the waste paper basket , he stuck it back down on his bedside table, right next to the unfamiliar light switch cord.

After rooting through the cupboards to find the stack of folded fabric labelled ‘pyjamas’, Steve changed and slipped under the too soft covers.

He stared up at the ceiling as the birds and horns of a familiarly strange city started to wake up. Sighing he turned on his side and screwed his eyes tightly shut, hoping that his soldier’s instinct to sleep anywhere it was offered would kick in.

Sure enough, as the drowsiness that shouldn’t really exist after however many years unconscious  began to seep in, he felt his thoughts get fuzzier in the dawn light.

“Goodnight C,” he muttered before the honks and shouts of daylight drowned out his thoughts and he drifted into sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. I am so sorry it took so long for me to update. Turns out when you combine starting new courses, visiting unis left right and centre, having some kind of 3 day plague, and then bruising all the tendons in your finger making them immobilised, it really slows down the writing time. Hopefully in future I will have updates a little more regularly, but no promises.  
> Thank you to everyone subscribed or left kudos- seeing the email notifications in my inbox spurred me on to get an update up, so thanks for the guilt tripping.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

They had told him to report to Director Fury at 0800hrs. The command had been familiar to him – his body acting out the order with little resistance from his otherwise engaged mind.

He had slept poorly, not that he had expected any different. The hours had whiled away with only a few short moments of respite between closed lids. When the ringing had started from the, from _his_ , living room, he was already wide awake and reaching for his shield.

The search for the ringing had been tense with every step being closer to the bomb, the mine, the distraction, the trap. Each footfall had been tentative - even after the second lap of the room and the ringing still persistent in his eardrums. He was only a few moments from bringing his shield down on floorboards, from smashing the slightly squeaky wood and ripping up whatever remained to find whatever it was that was beeping and trilling its way into his brain; when he looked across at the fridge in a last ditch attempt to see if one of C’s yellow squares informed him of basic modern protocol on your apartment beeping, and instead found a flashing oblong object resting on his countertop.

He had gripped it in his hand before his training had even kicked in to tell him to throw it as far out the window as he could. The tired, slightly uncaring part of him had ignored the instincts quite literally running through his veins when he had spotted the slightly tacky residue he recognised as being the tactile notification that C had something to tell him. After scanning the table top and floor around it and still not seeing the message on the paper square, Steve spun until he found the offending post it note stuck to his side.

The object was still ringing, vibrating beneath his palm which would have been unnerving if not for C’s accompanying note:

‘Mobile Telephone – will ring and vibrate if someone is calling you. Press the green button to answer, or the red if you are feeling antisocial – C’

He smirked at this as he ran his fingers over the unfamiliar raised plastic, before doing as C suggested and pressing green.

“Captain Rogers,” He winced at the volume, holding the phone away from his ear as the voice continued to talk.

“You are required at the Triquetra at 0800hrs. You will be collected from your apartment at 0730hrs. Upon arrival you must report to Director Fury.”

Steve glanced at the clock: 6.00am. While the name of the S.H.I.E.L.D base had thrown him off momentarily, the memory of a blurred face in a black suit telling him the address of the distinctive triangular building sparked the route in in his mind, past all the unfamiliar buildings and straight to the glass doors he’d burst out of a few days previously. Quickly he calculated his options, before realising that the phone was still talking at him.

“Captain Rogers? Report. Did you hear me, Captain?” The voice wasn’t as tinny as Steve had been expecting, but the tone of it was annoying nonetheless.

“Yes,” He realised he didn’t know what volume you were meant to talk at for these mobile telephones. He hadn’t encountered any kind of phone much- before the war he and his ma had been trying to make ends meet as the Depression waited at their heels , and during war communications were patchy at the best of times. Pigeons were often more efficient than something that required several miles of cables just to connect, and even then the speed at which he and the Howling Commandos had progressed meant communicating was often left till after the event rather than throughout it.

“Yes, I heard you,” He continued as he looked around the room for the wallet he had noted the night before. “I won’t require an accompanying agent. I’ll find my own way.”

“That will not be necessary Captain,” The voice sounded annoyed now, just slightly on the edges of its commands. “ The Director has asked for you to be brought to him.”

“I understand that, Agent,” Steve all but snapped as he found the offending wallet and the door key he had placed under it,” But I am perfectly capable of navigating three blocks without an escort. I will be in Director Fury’s office should you wish to see this for yourself.”

Steve took C’s advice as he pressed the red button with probably a little too much force.  Then he shoved the small plastic oblong into his pocket – the weight of it foreign even though he was used to pocketing bullets and grenades and far weightier things. The wallet was added and, after locking the door behind him with the hint of a scowl entwined within his eyebrows, the keys followed suite.

Steve Rogers all but marched down the New York street, dodging the first of a parade of early morning joggers as he internally screamed his frustrations at S.H.I.E.L.D and whatever they had planned for him.

**aAa**

Coraline had woken up with a line indented on her cheek from the steel of a nondescript table top. As she had gasped at the realisation that her slightly too squashed flat didn’t come with the table she was leaning on, her mouth and throat protested and evidenced the drought apparently receding down her oesophagus to make its point.

After coughing fruitlessly to force the desert from her throat, the world and her mind cleared enough for Cora to remember just where she was, and more importantly where she was.

She knew, as she glanced around her while her breath spiked in her throat, that she wasn’t finishing her museum exhibit in London, nor was she sleeping of the jetlag from the kidnapping/excursion that S.H.I.E.L.D had put her through after she had been dutifully returned home.

Instead she was in New York, America. As in the country 3000 miles from home America. The America where apparently government agencies could lock you in a room that is then guarded by gun wielding black suits in a building named after a glorified triangle.

Coraline’s stomach lurched downwards to somewhere about knee height as she realised the gravity of the situation. It was roughly about the same time that she realised that after the original intake of breath, she hadn’t repeated the gesture, and so now was feeling more than a little dizzy.

Shakily, she breathed out through her nose while internally she frantically tried to remember all the techniques she had had no choice but to master back in her first university degree when the panic had lurked around every corner and air in her lungs was a rarity rather than a commodity.

With eyes darting, she found what she was looking for. The corner of the room was about as enticing as anything in this unfamiliar country with an unfamiliar routine could be. As soon as she had laid eyes on it, the urge to slide down and squish herself as small as possible into the support of the walls behind her was all she could think about, all she could focus on.

Distantly, Coraline realised that this response, this banal giving in to her flight or fight instincts probably wasn’t solving the problem her mind was facing.

That thought was only corroborated when she unwittingly lurched towards the blessed safety of her corner, only to remember the last detail in the night before’s hazy details.

It was quite an important detail- one that sent her crashing downwards as her arms were all but wrenched from their sockets.

It was the detail that before she had been left in her locked box for the night, she had been handcuffed to the table.

“Yow,” she moaned as her body twisted in a vain attempt to accommodate for her arms going in different directions and away from their sockets.

“I don’t know why you need a historian to tell you what you missed,” The grimacing familiar voice of her new agent buddy, Clarke, drifted to Coraline’s unnatural position half on her chair and half under the table. She glared at him, knowing full well the only thing that could witness the hatred behind her eyes was the floor and doing it anyway.

“Short version, Captain: We won.”

The door opened and the glare on Coraline’s face turned to a grimace as she heard Clarke laugh from the doorway.

She tried to shuffle aimlessly to at least be able to shoot daggers in his direction, rather than at the carpet which really hadn’t done anything other than scrape her elbows on the way down, but froze when Clarke continued and she realised his position at the doorway was not a solitary one.

“Captain Rogers, this is Coraline Quinn. She’s your glorified kindergarten teacher. I’ll leave you too it.”

Despite the ache in her arms, Cora twisted to get a sideways look at the doorway and the departing Clarke.

A man stood in the doorway – taking up most of the frame with his sheer size alone. He was looking at her curiously – not maliciously as she was expecting but not exactly in a comforting way either.

Later, Coraline would cringe at her complete inability to match the name to the face in her history textbooks, let alone to the meeting just a few hours earlier with the Director that had seemingly gotten her in this mess in the first place. But at that point in time, with her mind still working a mile a minute without the complete amounts of oxygen needed, she instead decided that the best course of action would be to struggle to her feet.

Which was how, not two minutes into meeting Captain Steven G. Rogers, Coraline Quinn was dislocating her shoulder and swearing right at him.  


 

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I’ve had a bit of a tough time recently but here’s an update anyway. If there’s anything to momentarily distract me from the horrors of a blood test, its writing about Cora and Cap’s first meeting!  
> Thank you to everyone who subscribed or left- seeing the email notifications in my inbox made me smile, which recently has been all I really needed.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Thoughts? Questions? Criticisms? Please review or PM me with any views, good or bad. Thanks!  
> Enjoy!

I am sorry for the miscommunication, Miss Quinn,” Director Fury all but forced his way through his apology.

Coraline just nodded. She was too tired, still slightly jumpy from the remnants of the panic that had flooded her veins, and in just enough pain from her now strapped arm to bother with a remark, snarky or otherwise.

Fury huffed in response, before opening the door of the room slightly and gesturing for someone to come back in.

Oh God not Clarke, Coraline pleaded internally as she clutched the paper cup of tea in earnest.

Steve Rogers walked through the door, tentative even when commanding a far from submissive frame.

Cora didn’t know if that was worse or not.

“Miss Quinn will be continuing the first phase of reintroduction as originally planned,” Coraline nodded mutely again, half looking up at the Captain as he crossed the room to the desk and her chair besides it.

“Ma’am,” He stuck his hand out in greeting.

Coraline made to do the same, before a twinge of pain reminded her why that wasn’t going to happen. She juggled the cup back onto the table before shaking with her left hand instead.

“Hello Captain Rogers,” She breathed into the greeting, trying to summon up some courage from goodness knows where it usually hid within her. “I promise I don’t always make such an extravagant first impression. It’s been an odd couple of days.”

He smiled lightly, raising an eyebrow as he took his seat opposite her.

“You’re telling me.”

Coraline returned the smile, “Touché.”

“Still,” She continued as she traced the corrugated cardboard of her cup with her remaining hand. “I feel I should probably clarify that I don’t spend a lot of time in handcuffs. There was an error on the report that assessed my usefulness or something. Someone wrote a karate black belt instead of the one defence class I took in my first term of university.”

 _Two guesses who,_ Coraline thought bitterly, but hid it with a slight chuckle as she saw Captain Rogers’ eyes widen.

“Surely they would have realised their mistake when they saw you?” He questioned, before apparently realising what he was saying and backtracked quickly. “I mean, um, what I mean to say is…”

Coraline interrupted him out of pity, “They’re not wrong.”

Steve stopped spluttering to stare at her in disbelief.

“Whatever danger level they marked me on, or however shadowy organisations mark these things, they should double it.”

Steve raised an eyebrow, causing Cora to raise her hand in surrender as she properly laughed this time.

“I know, I know,” She reigned in her laughter. “I know I don’t look it, but the threat level is entirely justified, all in here.”

She tapped her head before explaining.

“I’m a historian. I know how every one of the horrifyingly powerful leaders of the last 100 years got into power, and I have a cheat sheet in my head of what to avoid that resulted in their downfalls. Give me 5 to 7 years, some cash and a disenfranchised population and I’d be a dictator in a decade.”

Sensing the Captain’s alarm, Cora gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, Captain Rogers. While I may theoretically pose a serious threat, I know from recent experience that any one of S.H.I.E.L.D’s goons could take me down in a millisecond. There will be no Quinn State this side of time’s beginning.”

She thought she saw the Captain’s eyes flash momentarily with what could have been concern or just plain surprise. She glossed over it as she continued.

“I have been uh... commissioned… shall we say to update you on what has been happening in the world for the past 70 years. I promise I am qualified for the task, but I also promise to attempt to not make this as boring as it probably sounds,” Steve smiled at this, catching Cora’s eye briefly before she looked back at the now partly shredded cardboard of her cup’s sleeve.

“I…uh…I don’t know what else you have on your schedule , or what S.H.I.E.L.D want from you, but if it all fits in with whatever else you are up to, I have sort of half planned a structure.”

Coraline rummaged in her jacket pocket with one hand, crumpling the S.H.I.E.L.D logo mounted stationary in the process.

Straightening it out on the desk by flattening her elbow over it, she swivelled it to face Steve, before using a pen on the table top to direct his vision to each segment.

Steve looked down at the paper, making out vague scribbles in between the paper’s creases.

“I thought we’d start with what was going on in other countries before the war’s end. I know a lot of it will have been passed on to you, but much more wasn’t and without that knowledge honestly nothing that happened after will make much contextual sense.”

Steve hummed in agreement as he stared at the handwriting – or at least what could be called handwriting. It was messy to say the least. He was sure he had seen better calligraphy from last minute battle plan scribbles.

That wasn’t what was bothering him though. What was causing him to agree to goodness knows what the woman in front of him was talking about was that it was familiar.

“Afternoon’s should be for fun stuff, so I figured teaching technology and catching up on media, music and anything else that causes you questions should go there…”

Coraline continued, drawing circles around the scribbles as if to emphasise to Steve that he really should know where he had seen this before.

“Um...” She faltered briefly, watching the man in front of her’s expression to check he was still with her. He looked deep in concentration, so she continued with a little less trepidation.

“Once my books and resources are sent over from England I can start writing guides to each year you missed. Key events, things like that. That way you can read in your spare time rather than waste it coming to lessons. Or you could have them made into audiobooks if you would prefer.”

Steve nodded, scanning the page looking for any clue that would lead him to the answer he sought.

Then, right at the bottom, the bright yellow ink apparently painted over the bottom scheduling detail snapped the world back into focus.

“You’re C,” He interrupted the historian suddenly.

She looked momentarily confused, before looking down at her lap where here hand had retreated to with his sudden outburst.

“Oh, yes. Yes I am.”

“You made me dinner.”

Cora looked up at the soldier in front of her. He didn’t look angry, but his tone wasn’t entirely free of accusation either.

“Um, yeah. I did.” She replied cautiously.

“I tried it this morning. It was very nice.”

“Oh,” Cora wasn’t expecting that. An angry word at her trespassing into his private life; a scoff at the amount of work she had put into it; those sorts of scenarios were crossing her mind like bullet trains. His compliment wasn’t one of their passengers.

“Oh, uh, good I suppose. It’s not really a breakfast food but still, I’m glad you liked it.”

Steve nodded before lapsing into a pensive silence.

“It’s Coraline,” Cora broke the silence before it had a chance to settle. “I could see the cogs whirring in your brain. Coraline is my first name, hence why I signed with a C.”

“Ah,” Steve smiled slightly. “Well it is nice to meet you Coraline; I’m Steve, though you probably know that.”

Coraline nodded, “I did, and I don’t think I’ll be able to shake calling you Captain if that’s ok with you.” She shrugged, “When you meet enough military veterans you kind of get into the habit.”

Steve wasn’t usually one for formalities; couldn’t remember the last time he’d been called Captain in the field. It was always Steve, or Cap or various other insults by Bucky-

No, his hands clenched under the table, he wasn’t going to think of that. Not here. Not now.

“That’s fine, Miss Quinn-”

“Coraline is fine, Captain. It’s easier and I sound much less like a primary school teacher- I mean kindergarten.”

There was an awkward pause. Inwardly Cora cringed.

“So,” she continued quietly, “Seeing as the shoulder fleeing from its socket situation has been resolved, we have about four hours until lunchtime. I heard the ever lovely Agent Clarke telling you that we won before I…uh… had the altercation with the table, so we could start there.”

She paused, pressing her lips together in discontent as she thought. Steve watched and waited.

“But, that is a nasty topic for a day when we are well acquainted enough for you to be sick in front of me if needed,” Steve’s eyes widened at that, but he was placated slightly by Coraline’s fingers tapping his hand that had returned to the table lightly. “ It is ok, I just think that with your current view of the world a little skewed, no thanks to eagle touting suit models,” She muttered the last part to herself, but of course Steve still heard and supressed a snort. “I just think it would be easier to start with something familiar, something easy to understand.”

“Whatever you suggest. You’re the boss,” Steve leant back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of his chest in waiting for whatever lecture he was going to have to sit through. As much as this Coraline seemed alright, he was fairly certain that whatever she was going to drone on at him about would not be even half as riveting.

Coraline breathed in imperceptibly as she gathered the information in her mind. She would be so much more comfortable with her books, with literally anything more than the pen on the table and her scribbled schedule in front of her.

Nevertheless:

“In 1945 much of Europe was in ruins…”  


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it is late again, but life and reasons etc got in the way. I don’t feel 100% about the characterisation here, so any feedback on how Steve was written or whether people still like Cora would be great. I promise the interesting stuff is coming soon – unless you like history in which case heyhey it’s already here!   
> Thanks to everyone who left kudos- it really was a brilliant motivation for me to update. Guilt always works!!  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

Coraline blinked open her eyes to the sound of pages rustling. Disorientated, she staggered to her feet, tasting the arid tang of sleep on her tongue as she pivoted on the spot.

She was in a library. Around her, shelves rose up to the globed ceiling above her, each teaming with manuscripts bound in various shades of tanned leather.  Jutting out of them were small scraps of paper and even more frequently, yellow post its, all inscribed with her scribble scrawl writing.

Coraline sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She knew where she was now. Navigating herself to the nearest table, she slumped into the overly ornate seat and put her head in her hands.

She was in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Which meant she wasn’t there at all. She was dreaming.

“Ugh,” She groaned as she buried her head in her arms on the table.”  This is getting ridiculous. I can’t go five minutes without being swamped in a history book in the real world, and now they’re following me into my dreams too?”

Weakly, she swatted at an offending pile of textbooks that had materialised on the table in front of her.

“Be gone,” She muttered, and was annoyed to not hear what she was sure would have been a satisfactory crunch as they fell off the table.

Peaking up from behind her pyjama clad arms, she noted with a sense of exhausted disinterest that the books were hovering in mid air. In normal situations, this would have at least mildly amused her. Now though- after one week of forcing herself and the Captain through a decade worth of political, economic and social change- any tolerance for the weird things her unconscious mind created for her to marvel out had gone rapidly downhill.

It wasn’t even that she didn’t like the 1950s. They were an interesting period of history – often overlooked in favour of the excitement of the conflicts that followed it. But trying to traverse over every slightly incredulous moment of American decision making over that decade with a man who was a friendly but undeniably massive patriot was proving not only slow but also worthy of several late night headaches when she had to try to phrase something in a way that wouldn’t cause his face to screw up in that almost imperceptible way that meant he wasn’t happy.

Coraline sighed again as she considered the Captain. He had been nothing but courteous, especially considering she could barely open the door to the interrogation room that had been converted to her ‘classroom’ by means of what seemed like several thousand textbooks strewn all over the desk and a large whiteboard in one corner acting as her paper.  All the doors at the Triquetra were heavy, Cora presumed for some kind of fire safety. Not that that made it any easier to open them with only one arm, while her dominant hand lay immobile in the sling across her body. More than once the Captain had come up behind her while she struggled to get some leverage against the door’s weight, leaning over her as if to emphasis the height difference and opening the door so effortlessly that she had to question whether it was really closed in the first place.

Still, however courteous he was, there was no denying that Captain Rogers didn’t want to spend his days listening to her talk about the past. She could see it in his eyes, whenever he thought she’d turned to write something on the whiteboard which always prompted her to draw some silly cartoon with the board pen, hoping that her lopsided left handed doodles were enough to put even the hint of a smile on his face. She could hear it in his voice whenever she said something sarcastic, whenever she let a bit of her personality sneak through the professional façade all the suits and security codes were forcing her to keep up.  He usually chuckled, or at least made an uncommitted effort to ask another question about whatever political treaty they were talking about, but there was something in the tone of his voice, something Cora couldn’t quite place, that just added to her realisation that nothing she was saying was really sinking in.

Despite this, she had continued to meet with him twice a day, each time for four hours. Her reasoning for this was selfish, she recognised this. She needed the routine, as skewed as it was from her normal day to day existence, and hell, even if she didn’t want to admit it, she needed Captain Rogers too. He was a constant, sturdy presence – a bland expression to look at every day from behind a textbook. He was physically there in front of her even when everything else she knew was moving in circles around her mind.

Coraline didn’t want to face any kind of emotional attachment to the man she was essentially tutoring, Not only was it ridiculous- she’d know him a week for God’s sake - but it wasn’t practical. Captain America was acting as the weight in the storm that was her own mind, adding in any extra reason to want to continue seeing him every day from 8am till 4pm would only bring in a new set of storm clouds.

Nevertheless, she had started to work on the written histories for him. Perhaps if she wasn’t the one telling him things, he might get something out of it. She’d already written up till 1975, typed of course because she didn’t want to inflict the horror of her barely legible left handed handwriting on the poor man. Sleeping had taken second place to writing, which at first hadn’t been too much of a problem as the jetlag of her unplanned trip had made itself known on day three of her ‘American Adventure’; but a week on and the books in her dream library were taunting her as they spun around her in circles.

The young woman moaned into her arms, thankful at least that dream Cora didn’t have the same dislocated shoulder that her real life alter-ego did. She just wanted to sleep properly for five minutes-

With a start, Cora was drawn out of her dream library musings by the sound of feet thundering along the hallway outside her room. While Captain America got his own flat, the historian had been allocated one room leading off of the barracks deep underneath the Triquetra’s maze-like structure. The changing of shifts at around daybreak was a more effective alarm clock than any phone setting could offer so as the feet continued to stomp past on the way to the canteen or gym or wherever else everyone seemed to be going at 6am.

Muttering plans to burn all the textbooks just to get them to stop haunting her sleep, Cora dressed groggily after braving the always cold shower in the gym locker rooms. Thankfully the main rush of people had been gone by the time she had dragged her bare feet along the corridor to the gym,  but after being again blasted with cold water upon turning on the water, she was starting to wonder whether personal boundaries and the privacy of an empty room was really worth the freezing wake up call.

Her hair was still damp as she navigated the now familiar twists and turns that led her up to the interrogation room.  She’d skipped breakfast in favour of finishing the 70s, which she knew wasn’t in her best interests but clutching the printed off booklets as she walked was making up for it at least partially. She was vaguely aware that the tip of her braid had snaked its way around her shoulders and was making part of 1963 damp, but she made no effort to sweep the russet hair away from her face, because her mind was already calculating how long it would take to get to the present day if she kept up her rigorous writing schedule.

30 years in the 4 days since she had decided to write everything down and save her breath was 7 and a bit years a day and that had included all the events that started the Cold War and the complete Vietnam War as well. When writing that particular booklet, Cora had felt a little bad to be offloading such a difficult subject onto the Captain in such blasé bullet point notes, especially considering the tenseness of his shoulders and the way he had gritted his teeth when she had explained the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that had brought the USA’s war in the East to an end.  But at the same time, if she could continue to write nearly 8 years a day (which was essentially an hour a year by her typing standards and if she continued her schedule of 5pm till midnight) she could be finished with the rest of the 20th century in just under 5 days. 5 more days and she could be home, maybe even sooner if she pulled a few all-nighters along the way. If she could clear the 90s by tomorrow-

“Miss Quinn,” Captain Rogers tapped her on the shoulder as she all but blazed past the room. He had watched her walk, head down and expression glazed, all the way up the corridor, and so hadn’t been so surprised when she didn’t slow down to go in. With one arm strapped to her chest, and the other clutching a thick stack of papers, she appeared smaller than usual, more drawn into herself. He had noticed that she was getting quieter; her voice less full of mirth and more full of the kind of exhaustion that Steve knew came from the early stages of giving up. She’d tried to hide it, but no amount of awful doodling or sarcastic comments about dictators he hadn’t ever heard of could cover up the fact that he had returned from the lunchbreak to find her barely awake scouring over another textbook, and that as he stopped her from wandering off to wherever her clouded thoughts were taking her, the shadows under her eyes were darker than before.

Coraline looked up, taking a few seconds before she snapped back into focus and cleared her throat.

“Good morning Captain Rogers. I have something for you.”

She thrust the wad of papers in his direction with her good hand, her face impassive as he shuffled them back into a semblance of an order and scanned the first one.

‘1945-50…’ it read in bold typed letters.

“I…uh…wrote up everything we had covered, and also everything that I would have gotten on to. It goes up to 1975 here, all bullet point notes so it shouldn’t be too much different to reading mission briefings. I’m finishing the rest now, so you should be all caught up, or at least able to be, in the next week or so.”

Sure enough, as Steve flicked through the booklets, he noted each section organised by date. There were a couple of booklets titled with wars, but he snapped the whole lot shut before he could read too much into them. The thought of further conflicts after the horrors he had seen made his heart fall. The Cold War, as far as Coraline had explained it, didn’t involve any actual fighting, but clearly that was about to change.

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to cover all of this in a week,” Steve mused as he looked up at the historian in front of him. She did look tired, which shocked him slightly. She had at least been trying to cover it before, but now she was fooling no one. Her hair was plaited but messily, her face was pale and without any hint of a smile. Her whole posture screamed for sleep, and as he looked at her, her shoulders slumped as if to agree with him.

“No, I know progress has been slow and boring,” She didn’t give him time to deny it, which he would do because he was such a gentleman. They hadn’t even got onto technology yet, and any interesting topics such as music or fashion hadn’t been reached with so much changing in America let alone the rest of the world after the war had ended.

 “I don’t know whether it’s my delivery or my accent,” Coraline continued quietly, “But I know you are not happy and would rather be elsewhere so I thought I’d give you the option to be. You can read these in the evening; you could even skip bits if you wanted to. History isn’t everyone’s thing so already you know more than most people around here do.  As long as you have a basic idea of what happened, you should be fine.”

She smiled lightly, while inwardly stifling a yawn.

“Your accent?” Steve was trying to comprehend what it was that the historian was saying, while a small part of him was full of a sinking feeling as it realised.

“I’ve noticed Captain Rogers, you look sad when you think I can’t see you. I don’t know who it was in your past that made you react like that. It really isn’t my place to pry, or believe whatever any propaganda might tell me, but there is no point continuing to catch you up on what you missed when it is only reminding you of who you miss instead. I hope you understand.”

She looked up at him reproachfully, and without really wanting to he nodded.

“Yeah I get it. You are a good teacher, Coraline,” She smiled without really realising as he said her name- and then kicked herself back into professionalism.

“You are a very patient listener Captain Rogers,” Steve’s own face momentarily flickered with something else as she didn’t use his name. Maybe it was a smile; it was gone too soon for Cora to see.

“Right,” She brushed the hair out pf her head before offering her hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you Captain.”

Steve shook her hand lightly, while his internal monologue screamed to stop her.

“I hope the 21st century treats you well,” She smiled again, trying to put as much effort into it as she could, before turning on her heels and heading back down the corridor.

She had almost gotten to the turning that led her back down to her room, when _his_ voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Peggy, her name was Peggy.”

She turned around, confusion clear on her features.  Steve was loping towards her, all but skidding to a stop in front of her.

She looked up into his eyes, her green eyes meeting his blue.  The ghost of a question was visible in her expression but he didn’t let her answer, not while he had this bout of Captain America courage running through his veins.

“Her name was Peggy Carter, and she would be giving me hell if I let you walk away now. So,” He faltered then, but a chastising glare from the photo in his compass that had flitted its way to the front of his vision had him continuing in one long stream.

“So whad’ya say we get out of here, find some decent food to eat, or maybe coffee if you like coffee, or not if you don’t but I don’t think you’ve been out much and the history isn’t going anywhere so we could take the day off and escape for a bit, if you wanted to that is?”

Coraline looked mildly shocked, though it was more from Steve’s sudden outburst than the words he had been saying.

She was still processing exactly what it was he was asking her when she was nudged by the Captain, who was now wearing a nervous smile.

“Come on Doc, don’t make me wait…” And then almost to himself, “I’ve done enough of that.”

Coraline smiled a proper smile this time, which in turn made Steve smile back. Shyly, she moved to link her good arm through his, before gesturing weakly with her sling in the direction of the elevator to the outside world.

“Lead the way, Captain Rogers.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s been ages (cough…six months…cough) and I’m really sorry! I completely lost my faith in this and was so worried it was slow and boring, but didn’t know how to quicken the pace to the good stuff. Hopefully I’ve worked that out now, and I’ve got the small issue of uni applications out of the way as well, so fingers crossed for more frequent updates in the future. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.
> 
> Thoughts? Questions? Criticisms? Please comment or message me with any views, good or bad, especially as I am paranoid that this is too slow and boring.  
> Also Happy New Year!

By the time they had made it to the nearest café that wasn’t already packed by the morning’s deluge of commuters in need of caffeine, Coraline had managed to wake up enough to satisfy Steve that she wasn’t about to collapse on him. The walk, in companionable silence which wasn’t awkward despite both expecting it to be, had given ample time for furtive glances from the captain to the woman walking alongside him.

She looked much more favourable in natural light. Where the harshness of the Triquetra’s LEDs left her complexion sallow and the darkness of the sling on her right arm all the more noticeable, the brightening light of another New York morning highlighted the copper in her hair and the light dappling of freckles across her cheeks. He made sure to always look away before her green eyes caught his, but as they crossed streets and dodged taxis that went a damn sight quicker than they used too, their gazes met at least once, followed of course by quick looks down at their shoes and the mottled grey pavements beneath.

Coraline too had been sneaking glances. Captain Rogers - or Steve as her mind kept automatically referring to him as despite her own indignance - looked happy to be out. It was hard not to be. The smell of the real world, however confrontational to her nostrils, was rich and musky and not the vague hint of disinfectant that lingered in every one of the Triquetra’s corridors. The noise, the vibrant cacophony of life without the strict order of S.H.I.E.L.D, was a happy deafening to her ears, and the sights – oh the sight of the sky and the offices and the seats outside the coffee shop the Captain was directing her too were enough to have the childish wonder Coraline had always felt when hearing stories of America be ignited in her gait and the way she kept craning her neck to try to see to the top of the towers above her. Between this unmanageable task, she would hasten a glance at the man who had led her to a table with the gentlemanly ease that didn’t come naturally these days, and was ordering something from the counter.

She was snapped out of her wistful musings by said man sitting down across from her and sliding a mug of coffee across the table and into her awaiting grasp.

“That’s something I haven’t gotten used to yet,” Steve murmured over the rim of his coffee as he took a sip, “The prices of things these days.”

After gulping a mouthful of coffee, Coraline leant back in her chair with a smile.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I can explain the political and social implications of inflation, but I couldn’t tell you why the economy works as it does or what that means for your pockets – I’m terrible at maths, always have been.”

Steve smiled and feigned disappointment.

“There goes my idea of employing you as my accountant then,” He joked. Coraline laughed lightly in return.

“Probably a wise decision, good maths skills has never run in our family.”

Steve saw an opening and took it.

“What are they like, your family I mean,” he traced the rim of his mug with his finger, trying to appear as casual as possible, and “It seems only fair considering my life has been plastered in history books for all to see that I know something about yours in return.”

Coraline blushed. Obviously she knew about the Captain’s life from her exhibition designs, but he wasn’t wrong in assuming that he was famous from earlier studies. The great Captain America had been plastered in history books on either side of the pond from primary school upwards. Kindergarteners and first year students had been hearing the stories of his triumphs from day one, so of course Coraline was well versed in his life story. Also, considering that the man who saved a hundred men was enough of an inspiration for the younger Coraline to have a replica propaganda poster on the wall of her uni dorm was enough to make any reference to her study of the man now in front of her cause at least some level of embarrassment.

“That’s fair I suppose,” She settled in her seat a bit more, mindful of the constant restriction the sling gave to her position, “Though I can’t promise you thrills and dastardly adventures. My life is as stereotypically dull as it can get.”

Steve merely gestured for her to continue. Having not been able to dissuade him from getting her to talk about herself, Coraline sighed before continuing.

“I am an only child, both parents still living though we don’t talk that much. I’ve always been a bit of a black sheep to the family – first generation uni and certainly the first to pursue higher education – so we don’t have many similarities to bond over.

One thing we do have in common is that we didn’t get out much as kids. Obviously, you…um… were sick a lot,” she stuttered as she talked about Steve’s own life, quoting a biography back to the person it was written on was odd to say the least, but a smile from Steve had her picking back up, “for me it was more that I preferred the quiet. I was about as unrebellious as you could get.”

She paused for a moment as if in decision before smiling, “I don’t suppose we relate much there do we?”

Steve smiled back, a devilish smile that spoke of all the split lips and bloodied noses and time spent limping off a concussion after refusing to run away.

“No,” he chuckled, “I don’t suppose we do.”

They pause, the silence broken up by the sipping of drinks and the background noise of the morning’s chatter, before Steve offers something of an explanation.

“Growing up in Brooklyn, the city being built all around us, it sure as hell wasn’t difficult to find trouble to get into.”

Coraline smiled, setting her now empty cup down on the table between them. “I can imagine. We didn’t have that kind of excitement where I lived.”

“Small town?”

“Small farm. As I said, my family aren’t really the education type. All of them are farmers, or gardeners or something else agricultural. There really isn’t that much you can do to get in trouble when the nearest place with kids my age was a bus ride away.”

“But…” Steve could tell she was holding something back. He recognised the glimmer in her eyes just as she had known his.

Coraline grinned conspiratorially. “But there was a bunker, completely abandoned and so steeped in local lore that no one had been inside in years.”

Steve watched as the woman’s eyes lit up, and raised an eyebrow in response. Gone was the meek young woman stuttering over statistics in the bellows of S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters. In her place was someone who reminded the Captain of the late night stories told around campfires by his compadres. The Howling Commandos were not unknown to start stories with ‘But there was a bunker…’

“I’d been told to stay away practically since I could walk, so of course as soon as I was big enough to open the doors I did. It was…” She paused then, her expression dimming slightly, “It was dark and cold and terrifying, but I figured that I’d be told off whether I went four foot in or twenty so I kept going. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I was maybe 8 or 9 and my interests were as varied as horses or ponies. I remember I tripped on something, a box or a canister or something…”

She trailed off, and Steve prompted. “And…”

“And after scaring myself silly from landing in cobwebs, I sprinted for the exit, stepped on something that set off a fuse and woke up two weeks later with three broken bones and one hell of a headache.”

Steve inhaled sharply, and across from him Coraline rushed to finish the story.

“I was in hospital for a week, and then was back home, grounded obviously, but also unable to get out of bed let alone ride a horse. I was sore and stuck and so, so bored, so I figured I’d find out what it was that landed me with two sets of plaster casts. One book on the Blitz and I was hooked. Upped sticks and moved to London at 18 and haven’t lost my interest in the past, yet.”

“That’s some origin story,” Steve eventually managed. Coraline managed a dull chuckle in response.

“Yeah, from farm girl to history hit in fourteen misplaced steps,” Steve set his empty mug back on the table, unsure of what to say in response. Coraline softened. “Sorry, I don’t remember much of it but my parents rarely let me forget. Strikes a bit of a nerve.”

She stood offering a small smile by way of apology. Then, much quieter: “I much prefer your origin story.”

Steve pretended not to hear. Aside from the history lessons, all he had been doing since he woke up was recite and have to repeat the same short years of his life that made him ‘The Star Spangled Man’. He had hoped someone who already knew about his life would be more interested to talk about the past pre-serum. That or something completely different. Perhaps he had been too naïve to consider a historian a good choice of companion, even temporarily.

But the way Coraline Quinn was looking at him - her eyes solemn even though she was clearly trying to hide behind a smile; that made him halt in directing her back towards the Triquetra, and instead turn towards more familiar streets – towards Brooklyn.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, and hopefully a few more in the works with some semblance of an update schedule. Things get properly interesting soon so the story should advance at a quicker pace as of now.  
> Just out of interest, would people be interested in more history lesson scenes between Cora and Steve, because I was worried that everyone would be bored of them and so haven’t included any this chapter, but I could at a later date/ add in some one shots of museums if people were interested?  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy and as always, please do tell me what you think of this. All opinions, good or bad, very much appreciated!

They hadn’t made it too Brooklyn. While Steve would not have struggled with the distance, thanks to too long being pent up in offices and underground, he knew Coraline would have faltered long before getting close. Part of him was glad for that. While the spur of the moment idea had been a good one, every step closer to his old stomping ground was heavier underfoot. He wasn’t sure he was ready to see those streets again. The New York he had burst into just a week or so ago had changed so much that nothing was familiar, and so nothing aside from his own memories could cause the sick feeling in his stomach that reminded him he was out of his time. Brooklyn, he had been informed from the tour guide and map he had brought on Coraline’s behalf, was relatively unchanged since he had last walked its streets, and so he could be sure of the sick feeling following him around if he showed her the haunts of his youth.

Coraline either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t minded.  She had been content to wander around the city, pointing out things from the guidebook and pretending at least to herself that she was just another tourist exploring the streets.  That illusion was shattered however by their comfortable silence being interrupted by the Captain’s phone going off in his pocket, causing them both to jump in the process.

He had sworn under his breath and then looked slightly abashed as he saw her smile at it. His expression turned from slightly embarrassed to boredom, and then very quickly to a mixture of anger and agitation.

As he ended the call, Coraline folded up the guidebook and looked at him concernedly.

“I have a mandatory psych eval in ten minutes,” he offered as an explanation.

“Oh, did they tell you about it before?”

Steve just gave her a look.

“No,” she sighed again cursing all that was S.H.I.E.L.D, “Of course they didn’t.”

“I’m sorry to be leaving you stranded here Miss Quinn,” The Captain appeared flustered but she waved him off.

“I’ll be fine, do you know your way back to the Triquetra or do you need the map,” said map was waved noncommittedly.

“I should be alright. I really am sorry, I would have walked you back but there was no compromise on timing and I’m on a short enough leash as is is…”

Steve trailed off and ran a hand through his hair.  Coraline’s touch on his arm bought him out of his agitated thoughts.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s only a couple of blocks and besides, I’ve taken up enough of your time today. Go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Steve lingered for a few seconds before another beep from his pocket had him strolling briskly down the street and back towards the S.H.I.E.L.D base. Coraline watched him go, still clutching the guide book and with the sudden realisation that she had no money and no feasible way of getting back into the Triquetra.

Well crap.

**aAa**

She had made it back into the S.H.I.E.L.D base through the simple method of walking briskly, avoiding the main hub of agents gathered at the reception, and then accidently bumping into a lab coated physiotherapist who had been looking for her anyway.

Fast forward two hours of painful prodding and more signed forms signalling her consent to have experimental but ‘definitely proven to work without known side effects for all field agents who had had it’ drugs injected around her shoulder and also generously lathered on top, and Cora was flexing her fingers of her now slingless arm as she walked back towards her bunk.

Whatever she had signed too was working, however dubious the colour had been. Nothing should be that green, but equally the pain in her shoulder was almost gone and apart from some light exercises and appointments too far in the future for the historian to want to think about, she had been cleared to use her arm again. All in all, considering that only that morning she had been staggering down a corridor running on half sleep, it wasn’t too bad of a day.

Obviously walking around New York with the Captain was another highlight.

She wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. He was polite and friendly and down to earth at moments, but enclosed and quiet and almost gruff at others. Not that Coraline could claim surprise about this. She didn’t need to be a psychologist to know about shell shock, PTSD and a myriad of other quirks and qualms that came with rehabilitation from war. She’d skipped the module on it, a second year one analysing diaries of soldiers who’d come back from the Front, but her friend’s had been filling her in on it of an evening, while she’d explained the module she’d skipped it for right back. Granted the history of Stark Industries weapons manufacture hadn’t been as interesting for them, but it did mean that Cora could know a little of what to expect from the Captain.

And it wasn’t like she was exactly a stranger to PTSD either.

Either way though, knowing or not knowing, it didn’t make it any easy to judge what he thought of her. That being said, she had seen a glimmer of normality, of a man letting his guard down when they’d walked and talked about nothing in particular, and it was that smidgen of trust or friendship or goodness knows what that had her sneaking back past the rabble at reception and following her little tour guide back in Manhattan’s depths.

**aAa**

“Morning!”

Steve was greeted by Coraline opening the door before he’d even set his hand on the doorknob. He crooked an eyebrow at the historian in front of him, who smiled in return before resettling a bag on a shoulder he noted was absent of the black sling he’d grown used to seeing. 

“Morning,” he replied cautiously.

The woman in front of him now was nothing like the Coraline he had seen any of the mornings previously. Her eyes were bright with mirth and a hint of the trouble she’d glowed with when explaining about the bunker. Her clothes were relaxed – a t shirt and jeans compared to the white shirts and presumably standard issue trousers she’d worn before. And she was smiling, which was a change indeed.

“How do you feel about the Natural History Museum?” She grabbed his hand as she all but dragged him out the door.

**aAa**

Coraline had done some negotiating. Actually she had done a lot of negotiating resulting in money and clothes and an all access pass to any museum in Manhattan.

At first Steve had been apathetic about trudging in and out of galleries about things that outdated even him. But the historian’s enthusiasm was nothing if not infectious and so as the days went on he began to look forward to Coraline brandishing tickets to whatever museums were on the day’s agenda, and paid closer attention to her often sarcastic commentaries about the subjects of the exhibits they saw.

“Divorces became so easy under Lenin’s social policy that you could send someone a postcard saying you were breaking up and that was it. My aunt would have been a strong advocate for that policy if only it wasn’t in the USSR,” when walking through a Russian History exhibit about social change.

“Pretty much all America and Russia were doing during the Cuban Missile Crisis was pretending their crappy marbles were amazing while secretly hiding the good ones because they didn’t actually want to trade,” as she tries to explain the Cold War over sandwiches in the museum’s café.

“We don’t have to do this exhibit today,” said softly as she guides him past an aeronautical display of WW2 jets.

They’d wasted five days like this. The exhibits had been varied, and in the case of the Museum of Modern Art, down right bizarre, but by the Friday of Week 3 of the America Chronicles as both Steve and Cora had dubbed them over coffee in a quiet corner of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, the pair had settled into the most normal routine S.H.I.E.L.D saw fit to allow.

And slowly but surely the awkward pauses and concerned looks from both parties turned to barely muffled laughs in art galleries over strange artwork pieces, in jokes littering what had been small talk and the concerned looks turning upwards into the beginning of affection.

It was odd, Coraline mused as she walked towards the next museum on the day’s hit list with Steve chivalrously slowing to keep pace with her, that this friendship kindled out of necessity had gone beyond the realms of polite laughter and hidden smiles. She had been ready to leave America and all that S.H.I.E.L.D added to it as soon as she was able to, but now, just perhaps, she might consider staying, if the Captain making comments on the window displays they were passing happened to be there too.

**aAa**

How odd, an agent cloaked in shadows trailing the pair from a distance mused as he watched, that the historian and the Captain had developed an attachment after only a few weeks of contact. How inconvenient, he sighed as he reported back to his superior while watching the historian elbow the soldier for making a bad pun, that this attachment would stand in the way of what was to happen next.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. A new chapter. A lot happens but hopefully it’s still clear. Any feedback, as always, welcome.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

_The grass was damp underfoot. It was early, and the dew of the July morning hadn’t yet dried as the girl trudged through it. Her welly boots were slick with the dawn’s moisture; her jeans collecting their own dew strands from brushing against the longer grass as she got closer to her destination. One hand was removed from her horse emblazoned fleecy jacket and a loose strand of unruly hair was tucked back behind one ear._

_The girl, as dewy in age as the grass around her, looked up at the metal door buried by brambles from under her fringe. She had snuck out of the house and past the early morning farmhands with as much haste as an 8 year old wearing wellies could do. All for this: for the door in front of her and the tantalising chance of uncharacteristic disobedience it promised. After bundling her hands back into her coat sleeves, she tentatively brushed the brambles away from the door, and watched as the rusted handle emerged from the thorns…_

Coraline awake groggily, her eyes blinking first to orient to the real world and then in confusion when she recalled what she was dreaming about.

She had omitted some details when telling the Captain about her one attempt at childhood rebellion. Three bones had been broken, and she had been grounded quite literally for the remainder of the summer. But she had rather downplayed the fact that the main reason for her ‘grounding’ was the four pins screwed into the bones in her left leg to keep them together; that if you were being pedantic it was six bones broken when not counting the fibula, tibia and patella as just one broken leg. Adding to that the broken wrist and fractured rib, not to mention the fear of loud noises, small spaces and anything dark and metal sounding that had stayed with the historian right up until a university psychologist had coaxed the terror out of her, and the dream recalling the beginning of that day was a little more than just a peculiar memory.

Coraline spent a few minutes breathing, inhaling and exhaling away the memory as she took stock of her room.

It was a little cleaner since she’d started working smarter hours. Museums weren’t made for all-nighters, so she’d had most evenings following a day with Captain Rogers to herself. That had left time for organising the piles of paper that had been making their residence wherever they pleased around her bed. Speaking of…

The historian stretched, wincing at the now familiar twang in her back from the unforgiving mattress. While she may have been getting more sleep, it wasn’t the most relaxing. It definitely made her envious of the good Captain’s bed. She was only in his apartment for a few hours, but while organising his wardrobe she could hardly have ignored his luxurious king sized bed.

She could picture it as she collected her shower items together with her clothes for the day. Perhaps it was only the delusions of her stiff neck, but she could practically feel the softness of his duvet and the plumpness of the pillows.

As she was showering in the blissfully empty S.H.I.E.L.D changing room, she briefly allowed herself to imagine herself in that bed, while the hot water beat down on her shoulders in as close a way as she was going to get to its warmth.

For a second, Steve’s body was tucked behind her generating his own source of heat, but almost as soon as that thought crept up on her, she swept it away with a shake of her head and the wonder of when Captain Rogers had turned so suddenly to Steve in her mind.

That added thought had sped up her morning routine, but not enough to stop the need to rush back to her room to grab her bag and notepad for whatever museum was on their list that day.

As she jogged out of the room, she bashed into the one box still avoiding her decluttering. She cursed and let the door slam behind her. The box hovered for a second before falling over.

**aAa**

8 hours later and the box was knocked into again, this time by the historian entering the room with Steve on her tail.

“You live here?” The Captain spun around as much as the confined space would allow. His apartment seemed a world away from the basement box room lit only by fluorescents.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Coraline shuffled some papers back onto her desk self-consciously. She too was thinking of Steve’s apartment and how orderly it was in comparison to her own space. “Sorry it’s a bit messy, I’ll find the guide book and we can be out of here.”

She rummaged as she spoke; only trailing off when she noticed the lack of response from the man filling all the other available space.  She turned around to find the Captain with the guidebook and the beginnings of a frown.

“Come on,” She attempted a chuckle, “It’s not that bad.”

Steve looked at her, then at the guidebook, and then again around her room. Coraline fidgeted under his glare.

“I have something I have to do,” Steve’s voice was cold, forceful. He seemed to notice the slight shock behind the historian’s eyes and softened his tone as he met her gaze. “It won’t take long. Meet at the room in ten minutes?”

Coraline nodded and accepted the guidebook thrust in her direction.

Steve turned on his heels and walked, no, marched out of the door and away down the corridor. His expression was steely, his fists clenched. Coraline wondered whether she had done something wrong as she was left in his wake.

**aAa**

_Some rust had come off on her fingers as she had turned the handle, lifted the bolt, pushed open the door. Curiosity had dismissed the sharp dustiness of the brittle metal. The door creaked and the sound echoed down into the dark. Coraline gulped and bit her lip. It was cold and damp smelling and she could practically hear the telling off she was going to get for doing this, but at the same time this was a new place, her space and she was getting in trouble however much she explored. And if it was her secret place, she sure as hell was going to know every twist and turn._

_The first footstep in was the most exciting. The ‘clomp’ of welly on concrete was bellowing in the otherwise silent space, but it was a brilliant kind of loud, one that made the young girl stomp her way down the tunnel with glee.  As she reached the first bend, she yelled ineligible nothings into the still air, just to hear them bounce back and greet her from wherever they had been._

_She had paused momentarily to extract the ‘I Heart Ponies’ flashlight from her jacket pocket. When the small beam of light had lit up the corridor before her, she had continued onwards, though with more tentative and a whole lot quieter footsteps._

_She didn’t really understand what she was looking at. Boxes were stacked, many offering just a glint of metal from inside. Papers were strewn on the floor, and many others tacked to the walls with lines and numbers that the child’s brain couldn’t even begin to comprehend.  She backed up to move her torch beam higher but no amount of light could make the documents any more readable._

_While breathing in the musty air, Coraline arched her light up to the roof of the bunker. A spider, disturbed from its twilight life by the barely there torch light skittered from its web and slightly down the wall closest to the girl._

_Coraline screamed._

_The scream echoed back at her, and in the shock of the sudden cacophony of noise, the girl staggered back and tripped over a crate._

_She fell to the floor, the torch rolled away until its beam settled upon the now fallen crate’s contents._

_The dusty visor of a gas mask lit up in the darkness of the tunnel. The spider advanced further down the wall, as if curious._

_Coraline screamed again._

_The scream drove the spider back up the wall, and in one movement the girl dove for her flashlight and all but crawled over the crate. While staggering to her feet, she brushed a hair out of her eye. The hair came off on her fingers and stuck to them._

_A spider wriggled free of the web now entangled in her fingers and scuttled up her arm._

_Coraline whimpered, then squeaked, and then wailed -_

Coraline’s eyes snapped open. The sheets tangled around her, her hair mussed and the damp of cold sweat down her back all culminated in the groan that introduced her to a new day. There had been a gap between the dream segments, one glorious night’s sleep that didn’t include a trip down memory lane, but apparently that one night was all she was going to get and the dream was back.

Groggily, the historian checked the alarm clock at her bedside. Disoriented as she was, it didn’t feel like 7.30am yet, and she sure as hell wasn’t getting up before it.

Sure enough the blaring numbers that meant 6.05 stared back at her.

Coraline groaned again, and was just about to roll back over when she was hit by the realisation that something had snapped her from her nightmare, and whatever that something was could still be in the room.

“Ah paranoid 6.00am ideas,” She muttered to herself as she wrapped her bedsheet around herself toga style and grabbed a textbook off the floor, “How I have missed you.”

She made one cautious lap of her tiny room, textbook outstretched, before a knock at the door caused her to drop it with a thump.

“Coraline?” Steve’s voice was muffled by the door, but even with it between them she could hear the concern in his tone. “What was that? Are you alright?”

In getting to the door, her sheet toga was tripped over and hastily rewrapped, and that stupid bloody box had its contents slid out across the floor as she all but vaulted over it to get to the door.

“Yeah I’m fine-” She opened the door to see a very awake looking Captain Rogers getting ready to kick the door down on the other side.  Instinctively she raised her hands with a hastily: “Woah, stand down soldier!”

Steve backed up and shook out his arms, clearly looking the smaller woman up and down to check for grievous injury.

“I heard a crash,” He started.

“I dropped a book,” Coraline explained. “You startled me when you knocked.”

“Right,” Steve looked at his hands apologetically. Coraline wrapped her sheet around her more tightly while inwardly hoping that the very short S.H.I.E.L.D shorts and tank top weren’t too scandalous for the 1940s man in front of her.

“Did you…uh…did you need something?” She looked up at him and stifled a yawn.

The Captain looked confused for a minute, before obviously remembering what he was doing outside her room at stupid o’clock and breaking into a tentative smile.

“I’m here to help you pack,” He said plainly.

Coraline didn’t know what to think. Steve’s words echoed in her head as she tried to work out how she felt. Packing would mean leaving, and surely that could only mean going home? She could be back to her 9-5 job and small apartment and nosy neighbours. London would be familiar and dreary and probably raining all the time, but it would be rain falling on streets she knew and with people who didn’t carry guns everywhere they went.

But that lovely, monotonous London would be sans one super soldier standing across from her. And as she looked at his slowly growing smile, she wondered whether that would be a good thing or not.

“Come on, say something,” Steve nudged her shoulder playfully. His smile faded as he looked at her face, blank with shock.

“Anything?” His voice wavered.

“I…uh…what?” Coraline spluttered as reply.

“I had words with Fury. You can’t live here with S.H.I.E.L.D breathing down your neck. Not when I’m in an apartment funded by the same organisation. It wasn’t right…”

Steve faded off as he watched Coraline’s face fall slightly, something she tried to hide as soon as it happened.

“They’ve set up an apartment for you. I helped,” Steve’s voice was draining of emotion as he spoke. “All your things will be shipped there this afternoon. I thought you might need help.”

Coraline slowly raised her gaze to his. He looked empty, not sad or angry or pleased. Just nothing.

Quite a lot like her.

She wasn’t going home. That thought hit her in the stomach in a stab of sorrow. But nor was she off on another adventure with the Captain to a museum or a park or a gallery. She had planned a trip to the zoo for the end of the week, but by the look of complete disengagement on his face that wasn’t going to happen. He was stoic and stone still in front of her; all sparkle in his eye dampened; all mischief sparking around him quenched. Somehow that hurt Coraline more.

“I’m not dressed but once I am I can…” Coraline trailed off again, feeling very small under the Captain’s stare.

Steve took it the wrong way. Her look of disappointment told him all he needed to know about the historian’s feelings. It had been the two of them against everything else S.H.I.E.L.D could throw at them, and he had thought that the smiles, the bounce in her step, the giggling in art galleries that they had shared, that that all meant that she was here, with him, together against the world. But one mention of leaving and her heart was already half gone. And that hurt Steve Rogers like a knife in the gut.

“Sorry,” He said tersely, “I am sure you can manage packing one room’s worth of belongings.” And then under his breath: “You have a Master’s degree after all.”

Coraline reeled back, towards her open door and the dream-mussed sheets beyond it.

“W-what?” She stuttered. “Where…where is this coming from?”

Steve couldn’t stop himself. His head was a mess and he was replaying Bucky falling, Bucky leaving over and over.

“Don’t act like you don’t know.”

“I don’t, I really, really don’t know what you’re talking about.  You’re…you’re scaring me. Are you-“Coraline reached out and placed her hand on Steve’s arm. She couldn’t understand why Steve was suddenly turning on her, it was so sudden, so unprovoked. It was the kind of irritability she’d thrown onto her own friend’s before she’d been frogmarched to a psychologist. Her eyes widened with the beginnings of realisation.

“Captain Rogers, I don’t know what I did, or if I did anything but it is alright, I am here and you are safe and –”

“Captain Rogers,” Steve mocked, shrugging off Coraline’s hand roughly. “Why so formal, Miss Quinn? Was the friendship just a front? Would it kill you just once to call me Steve?”

A twinge of pain shot up Coraline’s arm as it was dropped from Steve’s arm. The pain resonated in her mind, provoking memories of the first meeting with the man in front of her. She remembered the sling, the awkward handshake, the trip through the city a few days later. And as she watched the back of the only one she had had with her against all S.H.I.E.L.D had sent their way, she could barely fathom what had happened, on what she might have just lost.

*

It was dark by the time she had carried the last box up the flights of stairs to her new apartment. It was small and dingy and nothing at all like the room’s she could still picture from her first 48 hours in America. But they belonged to a living legend, an illustration out of one of her history books, the man that she had befriended who had knocked on her door that morning and not answered any of her messages since.

The historian looked at the meagre pile of cardboard boxes that waited for her at the door of her building. She hadn’t been in yet, feeling that as she was moving entirely on her own it would make more sense to do all the heavy lifting in one go.

Without much enthusiasm Coraline fished the door key from its place hanging around her neck. It fit into the lock easily, and the door required only a small shove before she was inside the shadows of her new home. Her very, very empty home.

Wearily, she hit the lights. And then she froze.

The light was cheap, fluorescent, an off white shade of blinding. But the room was still bathed in a warm glow.

Post it notes were stuck to everything, this time orange and with messages far longer than those she had left.

Coraline picked one up without thinking.

‘Hello Cora – welcome to your new house – Steve.’

Coraline sank to the floor, clutching the note and remembering how Steve had cancelled their plans to see the Statue of Liberty the previous day. He had said he had a training exercise, and apologised with a gleam in his eye that had made Coraline start to wonder what, but he was gone before she could voice the question.

She picked up another note.

‘Not too sure on cooking, but there is a box of teabags in the cupboard – something to make you feel at home – Steve.  

There was a beat of silence as Coraline’s mind whirred.

Then the silence was broken, as she curled in on herself and sobbed.

**aAa**

_She was running before she even knew which way she was headed. Her flashlight was still entangled in the spider web, and she was using the smell of dew on grass and the promise of an entrance that a thin slither of light promised to find her way out, out, out._

_As Coraline ran, her flailing arms knocked boxes and scattered papers. Her welly boots thudded on the floor, crunching plane schematics underfoot as she sprinted for what she hoped, what she prayed was the door._

_Up one tunnel, then around a corner. She kept running, feet slapping concrete, breath catching in her throat and begging for a reveille._

_She had stopped screaming, the tears that had come with the wailing drying on her cheeks as the stale air of the tunnel buffeted them. Instead she had settled for whimpers interspersed by stuttered breaths._

_One more turn and she saw the brightness of the field just a few metres ahead. The thorns looked almost welcoming: reaching into the tunnel to catch on her jacket and tangle in her hair; to make sure she was out of the bunker with the spiders and the monsters and that she’d never go back._

_As one welly boot brushed grass, Coraline let a sob, a proper 8 year old parent-wanting sob escape her lips. That sob muffled a sound, a good few turns below. A sound of a click. A sound of a tick. A sound of a boom._

_Coraline heard it in her ears as she was thrown forward. The half of her still in the bunker’s doorway hit the wall: hard._

_The half that was outside forced the broken inside half out into a ragtag tumble of limbs and blood and skin._

_Through one good eye, Cora looked at the dew-dipped grass flattened out around her. Vaguely, she heard a shout, and a small part of her infant mind told her to giggle because the shout was a swear word._

_She started a giggle, but it hurt her chest and her head and her mouth. It turned to a hacking cough for a few seconds, and then the breathy rattle of giving in as her vision faded and she let the swishing of the grass guide her inhales._

_There was another explosion that shook the ground below her. Coraline could hear it in her heat._

_Boom._

**_aAa_ **

She was hot. Hot and sticky and scared.

She didn’t know where she was. No wait, new apartment. Argument, packing boxes, post it notes. A vague recollection of getting into bed.

Cora breathed. She was safe. No bunker. No explosions. No need to be panicking.

A drink of water would do it. The minute she had the thought she was parched. One cool glass of water coming up, she hummed in her mind.

The room spun as she propped herself up on her elbows. The room continued to spin even once the initial head rush from going from horizontal to vertical. Coraline felt weird.

A cool glass of water would do it. Had she had that thought? Maybe it was just the dream, messing with her; like it always used to.

One cool glass of water.

Coraline struggled for the bedside lamp. The room was dark, and the only thing helping to guide her way to the wonders of electric lighting was the dim glow of the digital alarm clock.

**3.12am, May 1 st 2012.**

May 1st.

Coraline’s breathing sped up.

 She had moved into her apartment on April 18th. She knew because it was the last time she had seen Steve Rogers, and it was the small sketch he’d done of her from one of their many adventures, dated as the morning it had all gone wrong, that had waited for her on the kitchen table of her new home.

April 18th. May 1st.

Two weeks. She had been gone two weeks.

Steve. That was Coraline’s next thought. Where was Steve? Was he ok?

The question of whether she was ok came as an afterthought.

“I’ve got to get up,” She mumbled. Her body agreed and she lurched forwards.

Her feet touched the carpet and then invited the rest of her to join.

She slumped forward, crumpled at the knees and wondering why it didn’t hurt.

She breathed. She re-assessed.

She had been gone for 2 weeks. In that time, Steve Rogers could have gone anywhere, done anything, had anything happen to him. She had woken up from a nightmare she hadn’t had in years. She had been disorientated, tired and unable to see straight.

And now add to that list of ever mounting panic: she couldn’t feel her legs.

Coraline Quinn knew calling out for help was pointless. But that sure as hell didn’t mean she tried.

“Help. Oh God. Somebody, please! Somebody…Steve!”


	12. Chapter 12

Steve had been awake when the call came through. The lights had been dimmed in his apartment, the files he had been busy trying to ignore strewn across the table, while he himself doodled mindlessly on a notebook scrap.

It had been almost two weeks since he had heard from Coraline. Flashes from the argument prompted the graphite to grind deeply into the paper as he drew jagged lines across the page. It had been petty, and stupid, and the whole time he had been screaming at himself to shut up, to stop talking, to not ruin whatever it was between them, but still he had continued in a panic as he watched the one person he trusted wish herself somewhere else.

He had stormed off, and went straight to a gym ‘straight out of the good old days’ (according to its slogan at least) that wasn’t busy enough to warrant worries over company, but still had enough equipment for the residual anger to be beaten away into a punching bag.

A lot of hours had been spent there in the 11 days that had followed.  Every evening was spent pummelling his frustration, dust clouding around him in a spiral of anger, at himself, at S.H.I.E.L.D and very briefly at the historian he was spending most of his time thinking or worrying about.

He’d given himself two days to calm down, not wanting to witness the hurt in Coraline’s eyes again if he snapped at her in his confused, battle worn state. Two days of cursing himself and doing whatever S.H.I.E.L.D wanted of him with the same fist clenched, frown masked complacency he exhibited in his USO days.

After those two days were up, he had found his way to the location of the argument and knocked on Coraline’s door deep in the Triquetra’s depths. There hadn’t been an answer, and after feeling a pang of worry large enough to cause him to break the lock on the door, Steve had cursed his own stupidity as he remembered what had caused the argument, and pacified his panic enough to rationalise that of course the room would be empty, all of the historian’s stuff was in her new apartment, where presumably she was too.

This thought had calmed him as he repeated it like a mantra all the way to her door. His mind had only given way to the fluttering in his heart and speeding thoughts in his head when he’d received no replies for his knocking and calling through the door, and on breaking in the door noticing the lack of Coraline anywhere in the apartment, with her small amount of possessions still boxed and his post it note surprise untouched.

He’d checked every room what felt like a hundred times by the time he called S.H.I.E.L.D. With the collected ease of someone used to gun fights and hand grenades, he explained to the agent on the other side of the phone that Coraline Quinn was missing. The agent had sounded concerned, even if they tried to hide it, and ten minutes later a black van had pulled up and six agents had piled out, with Agent Clarke taking the lead.

Steve had bristled inwardly as the agent had inspected the apartment in a way that felt far too much like snooping, and then muttered something to another suited man who had nodded and then left.

“What’s going on?” Steve had cornered Clarke before he could make the hallway. The agent had sighed, managing to look irked even as the Captain towered over him.

“Quinn’s a flight risk. We assume she’s flown.”

Steve shook his head vehemently.

“No, she isn’t. Coraline wouldn’t just leave, she has nowhere to go and…” And she wouldn’t just leave him, would she?

The thought quietened the Captain’s protests, and in that time Clarke had barked orders to his men to check airports and call Fury, and had then left Steve alone with only the instruction to report for normal training as usual.

When he had cornered Fury later that day, and in the weeks that followed, every time the response was the same.

“Miss Quinn has gone to ground and we are in the process of finding her.”

And when Steve had protested, insisting something was wrong and that he should assist in whatever efforts were being made to find her, he had been met by a pacifying statement of nothing convincing and an added lot of training on his rota.

He’d spent his free time in the museums, searching for clues or for Coraline, whichever he came across first. But his efforts were fruitless, and so nearly two weeks later he was awake with papers from files Coraline had given him three days before the argument and her disappearance, hoping she would have left the ever illusive Clue inside their pages.

The phone had made him jump. He still wasn’t used to the noise and he’d spent most of his time alone now that Coraline wasn’t there to explore this new New York with him. So when the phone had trilled and beeped, it had taken him a few seconds to calm his heartrate back to its usual level and pick up the call.

Before he could even say hello, the voice on the other end whisper-sobbed down the line. It had been 11 days since he had heard it, but he recognised Coraline at once. What she said made his heartrate increase as his stomach jolted in a split second of pure panic:

“Help”

**aAa**

“Help,” Coraline had managed before having to stop and breathe the darkness away.

She was more awake now, her mind clearer, and her thirst quenched courtesy of the bottle of water she didn’t remember leaving on her nightstand. Every couple of seconds she had to stop and clear the black spots from her vision with rapid blinks and shaky breaths, but just like in the movies when the character has to save the day under beyond stressful conditions, Cora was managing the situation with a calmness she didn’t recognise but didn’t contend with.

Somehow, she had gotten out of bed after the water bottle had been drained and drag-crawled her way through the unfamiliar layout of the apartment to the kitchen. That had taken her fifteen minutes, if the clock on the wall was telling the right time, and with the lights usefully switched on by she presumed herself at some point in the two week absent period in her brain, she had managed to use upper body strength come from nowhere to heave herself up enough onto the counter to knock the mobile phone on it to the floor.

More breathing followed, until the post-it note attached to it became less blurry and the number on it could be copied with shaking hands into the keypad.

The dial tone seemed deafening in the otherwise silent room. She waited for it to pick up with bated breath, something that allowed only one word to sneak out amidst a volley of gasps when the line picked up.

“Help,” She had said, and only then remembered fully who she was calling and how their last conversation had ended.

“S…sorry to bother…” She trailed off, partly to suck in a few more breaths but mostly because of the barrage of questions she was being bombarded with by the Captain on the other end of the line.

“Coraline?” Steve all but shouted. “Coraline where are you, where have you been, what’s happened?”

“I…I can’t…” Coraline couldn’t process that many questions. The light of the kitchen was forcing her to squint to prevent the headache winding its way into her temples from increasing.

“Can’t what? Coraline, are you alright?”

“No,” Her eyes were tearing up – she could tell if it was from the headache or the relief from hearing Steve, comforting, safe Steve amidst the chaos of what was happening.

“What’s happened?” Steve was clearly trying to control his voice as the tone became softer, slightly less urgent. “Where are you?”

“The flat…I mean apartment. The new one.”

“Right, OK. I’m coming, just hold on. Where have you been, it’s been 11 days, Cora.”

Coraline’s voice was a whisper now, which only made Steve fumble with the phone more as he grabbed his coat with the other hand. “I don’t know. I can’t…I was here and then…I’m here again.”

“You’re not making sense,” He was out the door now and all but jogging down the corridor. He could hear Coraline’s shaky breaths down the phone. After a few seconds she breathed in deeply and replied.

“I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where I was,” She was speaking more quickly, her breathing going second place to the verbal vomit as her hysteria increased. “I’ve been gone for almost two weeks and I don’t know where and my head hurts and I’m achy and this room is so orange…”

Steve was running now, sprinting blocks as he bought the route to Coraline’s apartment up in his head. He was struggling to keep the phone to his ear, its metal casing small and slippery in his palm.

“And we were arguing and I don’t want us to argue because I like you and now you’re coming but the door is all bashed in and the lights are too bright and…and…”

He could hear coughing down the phone as he reached the last block before her place. When she next spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, a horrified, terrified whisper.

“And I can’t feel them Steve, I can’t feel my legs.”

Steve dropped the phone in favour of running full force along the street and around the last corner to her apartment building. He was met by a sea of flashing lights and dark suited agents, and with calculated glances he noted the eagle insignia and the now familiar outline of Director Fury waiting by the apartment lobby.

As the Captain skidded to a stop besides the Director, the door of the lobby opened and a stretcher rattled out onto the concrete of the sidewalk, flanked by four people in fluorescents.

Coraline was half sitting, half lying on the stretcher. Her eyes were roving wildly, her arms doing their best to flail with what little energy she had. Her legs were under a blanket, all of which was under the straps of the stretcher as it bumped off the sidewalk and towards the S.H.I.E.L.D logo-ed ambulance. Briefly, her eyes met Steve’s and softened in recognition. Steve was already pushing past the agents in front of him to get to her when an oxygen mask was slipped over her face and she was pushed backwards towards the head of the stretcher. In one fluid movement the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance, the doors were shut and the vehicle peeled off and away with sirens blaring.

Steve turned to Director Fury before the ambulance even made the corner, eyes showing his quiet anger.

“Where are they taking her?”

“A S.H.I.E.L.D facility upstate with the best medical care the agency has to offer,” Fury placated. Without Steve needing to bark more questions, Fury continued. “Miss Quinn had an adverse reaction to an experimental drug she was administered to heal her dislocated shoulder quicker than usually possible. She will be looked after and soon back to full health, however the more pressing question is her whereabouts for the past 11 days. What did she tell you on the phone, Captain Rogers?”

It took a minute for the information to sink in, but a follow up of “Captain,” from Fury had the military side of Steve kicking in and giving a response.

“Nothing, Director. She had no idea where she had been, or what had happened to her.”

Fury grunted in response to this, and motioned for a suit to take a note.

“And you’re sure she had no idea where she had been?” He clarified.

“Positive. Sir, what is this about?”

“Nothing that should concern you, Rogers,” Fury gestured for the suit to scamper off again, as he dutifully did. “For now you can continue with your training as usual. You will need these.”

A manila folder of papers was thrust in his direction. God knows where Fury was hiding it.  Steve didn’t flick through it, instead opting to stand tall and with his jaw set.

“With all due respect Sir,” I’d rather be with Coraline- with Miss Quinn until she is fit for work again.”

Fury looked at him, impossible to read even for Steve.

“With all due respect, Captain Rogers, that wasn’t a request.”

Steve gritted his jaw. If he noticed, Fury didn’t care.

“Your orders,” he continued, “Are to continue your training and read the brief in the folder. We will call on you when you are needed.”

Fury turned back to the now dispersing agents, but on noticing Steve’s lack of movement, swivelled back around.

“Is there anything else, Captain Rogers?”

“No, Sir,” Steve turned on his heels and paced from the mass of cars and slightly sleepy agents. The folder in his hand creased under the clenching of his fist.

**aAa**

The following days passed in one angry blur. He’d walked the streets for the rest of the evening, ending up at the gym only once every street had been walked with angry, stomping steps.

After clearing his head enough to think without seeing red - a task that had taken a day of punching sandbags and scribbling graphite into sketches that never got beyond smudged squiggles - Steve had gone to the Triquetra, expecting answers but instead being met by panic. A S.H.I.E.L.D base somewhere too classified to name had been breached, or if office rumours were to be believed blown off the face of the earth. With it lives were lost, and apparently more important to the government agency, something else was lost that was powerful, dangerous and now off the grid. Fury was nowhere to be found, and so Steve had had nothing to do other than attend his numerous training sessions, or return home and ignore direct orders.

He had thought about it for a split second before turning on his heel and finding a café.

Later, after a day of stumbling through conversations with a waitress and sketching the lines and arcs of modern skyscrapers, Steve had read the papers in the manila file. That had only blackened his mood further, and so back to the gym it was.

And that was where Fury found him.

“Trouble sleeping?” He had said breezily from behind him.

“I slept for seventy years, sir.” Steve was curt as he continued to stare at the punching bag, “I think I've had my fill.”

Fury sighed imperceptibly before continuing.

“Then you should be out, celebrating, seeing the world.”

Steve unwrapped his hands, barely looking at the man behind him

“I was seeing the world, sir,” He turned to Fury with a deadpan look. “Unfortunately my tour guide was drugged by a government agency and now she’s MIA.”

“Miss Quinn is recovering just fine, Captain. You are of no use to her at this time. Why not make the most of the time by yourself. “

Steve ignored him, instead going towards his gym bag and unravelling the last of the tape from his hands. When Fury continued to wait, Steve gritted his teeth through an explanation.

  “I went under, the world was at war, I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost.”

“We’ve made some mistakes along the way,” Fury countered. “Some very recently.”

Steve looked at him from beneath the crinkling of a frown.

“You here with a mission, sir?”

“I am,” Fury watched the man in front of him, trying to read him and thinking all too clearly of the historian that had stood by his side and her own reaction when he’d posed a similar question earlier that day.

“Trying to get me back in the world?” The Captain asked.

“Trying to save it,” Fury handed the Captain another manila file, watching as it was accepted with a slight hiss as the man clearly remembered the last one he had been given, its contents and the circumstances in which he had received it.

As the soldier opened it, Fury watched as he tensed even more.

“Hydra's secret weapon,” Steve said more to himself than to the man next to him.

“Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you,” Fury confirmed. “He thought what we think; the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs.”

Steve looked at the Director briefly, eyes calculating, before looking back at the file. Fury smiled inwardly as he saw the Captain’s resolve start to break as he was briefed.

“Who took it from you?” Steve asked.

“He's called Loki. He's not from around here. There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in,” Steve stiffened again, and Fury didn’t have to be the spy that he was to know who the super soldier was thinking about. He pressed on, keen not to lose the Captain’s focus.

 “The world has gotten even stranger than you already know.”

Steve huffed as he was brought back out of his thoughts. “At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me.”

And Fury knew he had got him, caught like a fish on a line.

“Ten bucks says you're wrong. There's a debriefing package waiting for you back your apartment.”

Steve didn’t acknowledge him, his patience run thin. Instead he starts to clean up his area, hefting a punching bag onto his shoulder as he strides towards the exit.

Fury called out at him as he left, his question reminding Steve of the night two days previously in all the wrong ways.

“Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?”

“You should have left it in the ocean,” Steve snapped on his way out.

**aAa**

What felt like a world away, Coraline Quinn looked up as the door to her room opened. A shadow stood in the doorway. Slowly, the historian removed her hands from her pyjama clad knees and shakily got to her feet. Her hair was bedraggled but tied back, her face clean but on the baggy eyed side of being awake. Her eyes, in the harsh lighting, glimmered in recognition. As she faced the person in front of her, her voice was cold and dripping in poorly concealed ire.

“You,” She said to the shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. A new chapter again. Any feedback as always welcome.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> So now we’re getting into the Avengers storyline. Hopefully everything is still clear, please tell me if it isn’t as I don’t want people to be confused!  
> All opinions, good or bad, very much appreciated! I am trying to respond to all comments so sorry if it's taking time but I honestly love to hear feedback and it always makes me so happy to see people have left a comment!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. A new chapter again. Any feedback as always welcome.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.
> 
> As always, please do tell me what you think of this. All opinions, good or bad, very much appreciated!  
> Also if anyone sees any grammar/spelling mistakes please do point them out. I’m going through and correcting bits as often as I can but I always feel bad when I notice one really late.

The Quinjet hummed as it made its ascent. Steve sat, holding a tablet and a frown as the plane levelled out and the journey to the next S.H.I.E.L.D base began. Across from him, an agent in a suit that made him indistinguishable from any other he had encountered fidgeted in his seat. Steve makes eye contact long enough to notice the way the agent, Coulson from his introduction as the jet had taken off, brushed his fingers against his lip and the swollen split in it that marred his otherwise calm features. When the man looked up to find he was being stared at, Steve looked back down at the tablet in his hands, or more specifically the video playing on it. Even with all that had happened to him, everything that was new and unbelievable, what he was watching still seemed like something out of one of the science fiction pictures he’d seen advertised but never had the money to see.

The scene of devastation flickering on the screen kept him transfixed, even as the pilot spoke up from the nose of the plane.

“We're about forty minutes out from base, sir.”

The agent acknowledged the pilot as he stood and crossed to Steve’s seat. His posture was easy to read, and it was clear that he wanted to say something, so the captain broke the silence with a gesture to the tablet’s video.

“So, this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?”

“A lot of people were,” Coulson explained. “You were the world's first superhero.”

He paused as he looked down at the screen, and then continued. “Banner thought radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula.”

As he spoke the monster on the screen roared in evident anger as a jeep was ripped apart between the might of its green palms. Steve flinched involuntarily as he watched the debris continue to fall around ‘Banner’.

“Didn't really go his way, did it?” He muttered.

“Not so much,” Coulson agreed. “When he's not that thing though, guy's like a Stephen Hawking.”

On seeing Steve’s blank expression the agent revised his statement:  “He's like a smart person.”

Steve nodded noncommittedly, the reminder of how oblivious he was stinging almost as much as the reminder that the person meant to bring him up to date on all these things was still M.I.A.

Across from him, Coulson steeled his courage as he tried to act casual next to the super soldier.

“I’ve gotta say,” He started, “It's an honour to meet you, officially.”

Steve smiled, partly out of politeness and partly because it was nice to see the human side of the agent come through. He’d grown tired quickly of the professional front everyone he had encountered -bar one- had encompassed.

“I sort of met you,” Coulson continued. “I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping.”

Steve could see the cogs whirring in Coulson’s brain as the agent realised how bad that sounded. As he set the tablet aside and walked to the front of the plane, the other man quickly rephrased as he followed him.

“I mean, I was... I was present while you were unconscious… from the ice.”

Steve didn’t respond, instead choosing to watch the skyline and try not to remember what the clouds had looked like the last time he had been in this position. Subtly, he clenched his fists.

Coulson didn’t notice, or if he did chose not to comment, instead saying something that had the captain looking up in renewed interest.

“I had some input with your rehabilitation too, quite by chance really but the museum exhibit plans were so fitting, a really brilliant memorial, that I couldn’t not put Miss Quinn forward for the position.”

“You met Coraline?” Steve would have berated himself for the slip – for using her name and not the professional ‘Miss Quinn’ he’d been forcing himself to think of her as – but the potential information to be gleamed from the agent in front of him was too enticing to care.

“Yes, I…uh…bought her in – to S.H.I.E.L.D I mean.”

“She was handcuffed to a table,” Steve said bluntly.

“I was seconded to another facility before that happened, but I am regretful that it occurred.”

 Steve acknowledged the sentiment with a nod, and Coulson visibly relaxed – something that was reversed when Steve continued.

“So if you were the one that recruited her, you could be held responsible for what happened to her.”

“Uh…yes.” Coulson touched his split lip again subconsciously. “Some people would definitely see it that way.”

He paused for a minute, and when Steve turned to look back out of the window, he continued his original train of thought.

“You know, it's really, it's just a... just a huge honour to have you on board.”

Steve looked at him, his focus on the historian ebbing down as he remembered his current purpose and predicament.

“Well, I hope I'm the man for the job,” He muttered.

“Oh, you are. Absolutely,” Coulson replied reverently. “Uh... we've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input.”

Steve looked up with a shock, mostly at the notion that his uniform would still be considered viable let alone practical, but also because a small part of him could not get a handle on the agent next to him – or more specifically the excitement was radiating off his awkward movements and statements of barely disguised awe.

Instead of commenting on this, Steve queried his first point.

“The uniform? Aren't the stars and stripes a little...old fashioned?” He winced at this internally, the pain of calling everything he knew old still a fresh one in his mind.

“With everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned.”

**aAa**

Not long later and the S.H.I.E.L.D facility- an aircraft carrier on a megalithic scale to Roger’s eyes– was being touched down on. After the introduction of Rogers and Romanov, Coulson crossed the deck of the Helicarrier and in through the code protected doors.

Before he could get two steps along the corridor, a voice stopped him

“You didn’t ice it.”

Coulson turned to find Coraline leaning against the wall, looking both casual and uncomfortable in the close fitting S.H.I.E.L.D uniform.  As she saw she’d got his attention, she crossed in front of him to get a better look at his lip.

“I told you to ice it, wouldn’t have swollen as much if you had,” She muttered as she squinted at the bruising.

Coulson didn’t answer her, instead gesturing to her clothes with a: “Looks good.”

“I look like a Thunderbird,” Cora deadpanned as she straightened, one eyebrow raised. “Is he here?”

“Yes,” Coulson guided the woman with one arm as he continued his original journey towards the bridge. “Fury’s orders were for you to stay conveniently out of the way.”

“I know,” Coraline walked ahead of him enough to turn and force him to stop. “Is he alright?”

Her eyes were searching, and the emotion beyond them was enough to make Coulson sigh and lead the historian to an empty briefing room off of the corridor.

“He’s fine. Angry and confused but training well and in the right frame of mind for what he might have to do yet.”

Coraline nodded, her face - for once - giving away nothing. Coulson stared at her and sighed again, this time through his teeth, as she remained blank.

“Look, I don’t like this situation. Orders are orders and you don’t answer to me at all but...”

Cora looked ready to retaliate, but Coulson continued before she could.

“But I really need you to monitor a junior agent’s progress at the bridge.”

“I…I don’t have any qualifications to do that…”She trailed off as she realised.

“It’s really very important,” Coulson emphasised.

Coraline touched Coulson’s shoulder as thanks, and they met eyes before her gaze again went to his lip.

“I am sorry about that,” She muttered.

“I know, you did mention,” Coulson returned with a smirk.

**aAa**

Two days previously and Coraline had been looking at the same agent with a fury in her gaze.

““You,” She had said, before a fist had flown up in impulse and met the face of Agent Coulson with force.

With all respect to Coulson, he had taken the punch well. His head had snapped back and his lip had split, but Coraline was not a practiced puncher and it was the shock more than anything that had the agent reeling.

The historian had stared at her own hand, and flexed the aching fingers she had fisted to throw the punch. Then she had rushed an apology quicker than the words could properly come out of her mouth.

“I am so sorry, I don’t even know why I would…I’ve never done that…I just blamed you and ….wait a minute…” She had paused then, looking at her hand with a new expression on her face – one that quickly returned to one of anger again. “I’m not sorry. It’s your fault I’m in this mess. It’s your fault S.H.I.E.L.D found me and hurt my arm and lost me for two weeks and won’t tell me anything. I’m not sorry at all!”

She had gone to punch him again then, but Coulson was ready this time and had caught her fist before it made contact with anything.

They had stood like that, her outstretched arm being restrained by his, eyes making contact – calm blue to anger-dimming green.

“I am sorry for what S.H.I.E.L.D has done to you,” Coulson eventually spoke. Coraline let the tension fall from her arm as she relaxed in silent thanks.

“I have a proposition for you, a fair one this time,” Coulson had said and Coraline had listened.

**aAa**

The Helicarrier bridge was a flurry of activity, with agents watching their screens and barking out order codes Coraline didn’t recognise as the ship took flight. From her position on the floor, she could just see Director Fury at the main command post, and the always moving figure of Deputy Director Hill could be seen flitting between computer bays as she completed the necessary checks. As she passed Cora’s position the historian attempted to look busy. While Fury will almost certainly have clocked the fact that she is exactly where she shouldn’t be, her uniform and standard hairdo of a tight bun minus a few stubborn curls around her face were enough to disguise her from the rule abiding Deputy Director. Thankfully, Hill didn’t notice, instead favouring to report: “We're at lock, sir.”

Fury responded with the command to vanish, and the bridge whirred as whatever mechanism Coraline didn’t even begin to try and understand got put into effect.

The historian was just admiring the abundance of nothing where the slight glimpse of one of the ship’s engines should be visible, when she heard the door to the higher level of the bridge beep open.

She didn’t turn around straight away as she was still maintaining, or at least attempting to maintain, the guise of innocent and very busy S.H.I.E.L.D employee.

 On hearing Fury greet the people who had just walked in however, she couldn’t control her head whipping around and her gaze jumping straight to the upper level.

She couldn’t help her breath catching slightly as she watched Captain Rogers extract a bill from his pocket and hand it to the Director.

She certainly couldn’t help the audible gasp she let out when Fury crossed to greet the other man – someone in a purple shirt and a wary expression – and left Steve staring out across the bridge lower floor, or more accurately as their eyes met, right at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. A new chapter again. Any feedback as always welcome.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.
> 
> As always, please do tell me what you think of this. All opinions, good or bad, very much appreciated!  
> Also if anyone sees any grammar/spelling mistakes please do point them out. I’m going through and correcting bits as often as I can but I always feel bad when I notice one really late.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!  
> Today is the one year anniversary of this fic being published, so I’ve persevered to get an update out to commemorate! Life’s hectic currently with exams and writers block, but following all that I should have more time to write so hopefully more updates soon!  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> As always please do let me know your comments, thoughts or feelings, as well as pointing out any mistakes *shakes fist* there’s always one!  
> Enjoy!

Steve stared unashamedly at the historian on the deck below him. She looked well, not half awake in a hospital bed somewhere as he had assumed. Instead, in the tight skirt and heels that made up the S.H.I.E.L.D uniform, she looked like she belonged. The thought made his gut twist.

He was down the steps and in front of her before he fully recognised what he was doing. Her heels clattered on the floor as she rushed forwards. Her eyes were concerned as they met his, and up close she looked less acclimated. Her hair was pulled up messily and the uniform was ill fitting making the historian look like a younger child who inherited their sibling’s clothes.

“Are you OK?” Coraline skidded to a stop in front of Steve, one hand extended as if to touch his arm. As Steve looked at her, she returned her arm to its previous position hugging her waist.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asked instead. With all the different theories his mind was throwing at him on why Coraline was working in a S.H.I.E.L.D facility dressed like a hand-me-down agent, he couldn’t define himself as OK just yet.

“I…uh…” Coraline faltered.

She felt like she was wading deeper and deeper into a lake. She couldn’t read Steve’s expression, didn’t know if he was angry or relieved, or how he would take the news that she had recovered and then accepted a contract with S.H.I.E.L.D that would send her to whichever base needed things filing. So she faltered instead and breathed a sigh of relief when Director Fury interrupted from the upper level.

“Dr. Quinn has been assigned to assist in the search for the Tesseract.”

Steve was quick to see the confusion flash across Coraline’s face, as she stuttered a ‘Wha-” before Fury cut her off with a glare.

“She was just going to aid Dr. Banner in finding his laboratory, weren’t you Dr. Quinn.”

Coraline looked up at Fury and the slightly uncomfortable looking man in glasses hovering behind him. Then she looked back at Steve, whose expression was a subtle mix between confusion and perhaps a hint of anger.

She repeated her split second glances, trying to work out what to do, what to say, where to run.

“Oh screw it,” She muttered to herself, and with a swift click clack of her heels on the bridge flooring, she closed the gap between herself and the Captain and drew him into a hug.

It wasn’t a good hug. Her arms were in the wrong place, the leather of Steve’s jacket was clammy against her fingers, and all the time she was screaming at herself:

 ‘What are you doing? Stop it; you’ll ruin everything you haven’t already!’

But still she squeezed her arms tighter, trying to convey in that split second whatever it was her mind couldn’t’ articulate with words.

Steve stood rigid, his arms hovering over Coraline’s back, not daring to touch, or perhaps being too surprised to.

As quickly as she had begun, Coraline darted backwards.

“Sorry,” She directed her whisper-choked apology at the stunned man in front of her, before walking as fast as possible up the stairs and to the man in the purple shirt who seemed just as nervous as she now was.

“Dr. Banner?” She queried.

When the man nodded, she tried her best to offer a friendly smile, and when that turned into a grimace, she gestured towards the nearest door.

Natasha Romanoff watched the historian skitter off down the hall with the scientist in tow. Sighing, she kicked off from the desk she had been leaning on and caught up with the duo.

“The laboratories here are very… um…high tech, I think,” Coraline’s voice was shaky as she tried to make conversation with the doctor giving her confused side-eyed glances.

“Yeah,” Natasha chipped in – startling them both in the process, “You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys.”

**aAa**

Coraline had left Agent Romanov and Dr. Banner at his lab, under the pretence of going to find drinks. In reality she was three decks down with a vending machine and an empty corridor, trying to work out what it was she was doing.

When Coulson had entered her room two days previously, he had smiled and seemed sincere in a way Coraline almost didn’t recognise for someone working for S.H.I.E.L.D. He had apologised for all that had happened to her, explained the situation that had caused the agents outside her door to be such a flurry of movement, and then offered her a proposition.

She couldn’t go home. Not yet. The Tesseract being stolen had panicked the organisation, and all available agents were working on its recapture. There was no way to debrief her, send her home and make up a convincing enough story for where she had been for the past month – not with the potential threat to the world being so imminent.

So instead, Coulson had offered a compromise. She could sign a contract, as did any other employee of S.H.I.E.L.D, and would officially work for the agency – with pay check and all – just until the Tesseract situation had been dealt with. After that, she was free to go back home to her old job and old life, no strings attached.

Coraline had signed. She hadn’t really needed to think about it. She needed the confirmation that she could leave, and she would be lying if she didn’t think for a split second that she might bump into Steve again before she did.

After signing, Coulson had shown her the mess hall, the gym, and given her access to one of many supply closets in order to get a uniform and any other ‘home comforts’ she needed (aka towels, bed linen and an alarm clock pre-set to 5.00am much to her horror). 

He had also explained that she was currently in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on an aircraft carrier/flying boat.

That one had taken some getting used too, as had the constant maze of decks and compartments that stood between her and anywhere she wanted to go.

Fast forward back to the present though and Coraline was doing ok. She was managing the constant twinge of doubt in her gut. She was managing the sea/air sickness combination (thanks to some anti-nausea tablets whipped up in the medical suites). She was managing wearing the emblem of the agency she had mixed and mostly negative feelings about. She was managing.

A small beeping noise bought her back from her thoughts. She looked at her wrist in confusion before remembering the standard issue watch was a part of her uniform. And apparently it was telling her it was 4 hours since her last tablet, and so time for another.

The utility belt that was obligatory to the uniform was meant to hold munitions, probably some kind of grenade Cora had never heard of, and various other bits of tactical kit.

Her utility belt held some tissues, a roughly sketched map of the routes she needed to follow to get between decks, a packet of those crumbly, kind of bland tasting biscuits like you get with free hotel coffee that she had snaffled from the mess hall, and in the tiniest pouch, the small white pills that took away the churning feeling in her stomach.

Coraline reached for one of those pills with one hand, while the other pressed a button and then picked a water bottle from the vending machine’s maw.  The pill was swallowed in one smooth motion, but when a voice spoke from behind her, the historian choked on her drink.

“You’re sick?”

Steve Rogers stood in the corridor behind her.

He didn’t apologise as Cora continued to splutter, instead waiting stoically till she straightened and looked up at him.

“I’m fine,” She said quietly. “Have they found the Tesseract yet?”

“You’re ‘assisting in the search’ aren’t you? Surely you should know?”

 Steve knew he was being bitter, but Coraline owed him at least a semblance of an explanation as to why she was on the Helicarrier and taking orders like a good little agent, all without a word to him about the apparent career change.

Coraline pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh.

“I’m not helping anybody. I’m just here until the Tesseract is found.”

“And then?” Steve knows the answer already – after all wasn’t this what they were arguing about two weeks before?

“Back home,” Coraline chose her words carefully, wishing she didn’t have to have this conversation. “My replacement must be better than me, huh?”

Her small smile was met with a confused stare.

“What replacement?” Steve couldn’t keep the bark out of his voice.

“Uh…I…I thought…” Coraline faltered. Now she was the one that was confused.

“Cora, you haven’t been replaced. You went missing for 11 days, and when you turned up again you were rushed off in an ambulance before I could even say hello. I’ve heard nothing since then, and I sure as hell haven’t’ been getting any more lessons.”

“I…I assumed you had found a better teacher, someone more qualified or something and that’s why I was…why I could…”

Steve stepped closer to the historian, searching her face as he asked:

“What is going on, Coraline?”

Coraline paused in her thoughts as she looked up at the man. The anger was gone from his eyes, or at least wasn’t directed at her. Instead his eyes were gentle, kind.

She could have explained everything. Could have regurgitated what she had been told when she had woken up with functioning legs and one hell of a headache: that she had had a reaction to one of the experimental drugs she’d taken. That it had caused her nervous system to short circuit momentarily but that it was all fixed now. And she could have expressed her doubts about this, backed up by glances between doctors she had caught from the corner of her eye; by blue prints lying on the table of the medical room that were swept up before she could read them; by the itching, prickling feeling between her shoulder blades and on her ankles that had gone away pretty quickly, but had still caused worried looks between the nurses when she had mentioned it.

She could have said all of that, but when she looked into his eyes, she didn’t want to. Because even with her mind constantly thinking and worrying about what it all meant, she still didn’t know. And nothing was worse than not knowing alone.

 Coraline broke.

“I don’t know,” She said softly. “I really don’t know.”

Steve inhaled sharply as he saw the historian’s eyes get damp. He wasn’t expecting that response. He had thought she would remain as closed off as she had been previously. Her behaviour on the bridge had been so out of character, so unlike anything he had seen from the historian, he had assumed she wasn’t who she said she was and so wouldn’t act as the Coraline he had known when confronted. 

But instead he got this: a shaken, confused historian who looked near identical to the woman he had met a month ago in a boardroom of the Triquetra.

Coraline bowed her head and sniffed back the tears as Steve remained motionless. Her hands were shaking in their fists, and the water bottle was being scrunched up in the process.

She flinched when her hand touched her shoulder. She met Steve’s eye, and of course it was his hand resting there, and saw he was about to say something.

“Cora, I-” Steve’s hand went to his ear as his expression changed. His hand dropped from her shoulder and clenched into fists at his side. He nodded to himself and his gaze became steely, focussed.

“The Quinjet has its wheels up in five. I’ve gotta go.”

“What? Where?” Coraline stepped backwards as Steve started off down the corridor.

“Germany. They found Loki, he should have the Tesseract with him.”

So they had found it, that was something at least, Cora thought.

“The Quinjet deck isn’t that way,” She called after him as he turned left at the end of the corridor.

“I know,” Steve called out behind him. Without seeing him, Cora could imagine his expression switching to one of complete seriousness, his jaw being set and his eyes being focussed. “First, I’ve got to put on a suit.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter, and the promise of more to come ( hopefully sooner than the last) as I have now finished school forever and so have much more free time!   
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> As always, please do tell me what you think of this. All opinions, good or bad, very much appreciated!  
> Enjoy!

After the team had left, the Helicarrier had rippled with a nervous energy. Those on the bridge felt the possibility fizz at their fingers as they typed, the agents in the hold muttered between themselves as they polished the glass and checked the fastenings of the glass dome now being repurposed as a prison cell. As Coraline passed the medical wing on her way back towards the laboratory and the only vaguely familiar face left on the ship, she could see them pouring over paperwork and tapping syringes with a kind of precision that could only be interpreted as ominous.

As soon as she entered the laboratory, however, the nervous energy faded.

The lab was unbelievably, unsettlingly calm. The man in the purple shirt – Dr. Banner as he had been introduced – bumbled around, jotting down calculations and checking instruments. Every one of his moves appeared calculated, as if he was thinking precisely about every footfall, every scribble, every breath.

Coraline coughed from the doorway. He didn’t jump, merely looking up with a confused expression which changed to that of recognition when he saw who had interrupted him.

“Dr. Quinn,” he managed a small smile. “Come in, come in. I could use a distraction.”

“You and me both,” Coraline chuckled as she stepping into the room.

“Are S.H.I.E.L.D being as arduous as always?” Bruce said as he gestured for Coraline to perch on one of the tables.

As she sat, cross-legged and watching him, she felt young (with recollections of times in her first year of university where she would hang out with scientific friends in much the same way) and with it vulnerable. She bit her lip to hide the thought. Dr. Banner picked up on it anyway.

“You haven’t encountered them before, have you?” He asked as he put the equipment down and met her gaze.

Coraline shook her head. She sighed, before gathering her resolve and opening the pouches on her belt.

“I brought snacks and drinks…” she faded off as she felt Banner’s stare continue, unabated.

Coraline’s shoulders drooped as she arranged the last of the vending machine scavenged snacks on the table besides her. Then she turned and faced the man standing across from her.

“A month ago I was working in a museum in London, and now I am on a secret agency’s flying ship while a glorified nightlight has been stolen and a malevolent Norse god is taking a selection of spies and a 1940s propaganda tool on a goose chase round Germany. S.H.I.E.L.D aren’t being arduous, they’re just not making any sense.”

Bruce looked at the women across from him. After laughing at her own statement, she had cracked open one of the snack and was nibbling on some dried fruit. Even from his position across from her, he could see the fear that lingered in her eyes, the uncertainty that aligned well with the dark shadows under them.

He didn’t see himself when he looked at her. In him there was the anger, the anger at being called in and the anger of what had happened to him before and since. With her though, there was no anger, no flash of resentment or niggling for reparations. Instead she just looked tired, and confused, and at least a bit stressed.

“That sounds like S.H.I.E.L.D,” he admitted. “What exactly are you doing here, then?”

Coraline laughed.

“How long have you got?” She joked.

Bruce smiled and exaggerated looking at his watch.

“I don’t know,” he smiled. “I can fit you in between finding the nightlight and chasing a trickster.”

Coraline smiled - a proper smile that felt foreign on her features.

“Well,” she started…

**aAa**

Time passed differently on the Helicarrier. It was one of the first things Coraline had learnt when she had been posted to the craft. Even though there were shift rotas and bells rung on the hour, the lack of natural light and the quietness of the ship disorientated all those on board, and allowed for hours to slip by or drag with ease.

It was this disorientation that caused Coraline and Dr. Banner (or Bruce, as he had insisted on being called) to talk about everything and nothing far into the night that had only begun to draw in when the Quinjet had left with the Widow and the Captain.

Their conversation had been stilted at first, with Coraline unwilling to give up too much while Banner still had the stare of a concerned doctor plastered to his face.

By the second hour of round and round conversation about doctoral theses and the climate of Kolkata, the look had gone and been replaced by a genuine interest in what Coraline was saying.

And so they had spent the time, laughing and fiddling with instruments (with Coraline having a surprising amount of success with one piece of machinery that – to her at least – was no more complicated than the farm tractors she had often watched her father fix) up until the interruption of the tinny alarm of her watch, telling her six hours had passed and that she needed to take another tablet.

She shook out the tablet from its foil casing and was searching amidst the snack packets for a water bottle when Banner stopped her.

“What are you taking?”

She paused, and he used the moment to backtrack, unsure if their familiarity had gotten to the stage of asking about medications yet.

“I mean, if you want to say. You don’t have to, I am intruding and you get enough of that from S.H.I.E.L.D. Sorry, I’ll –“

“It’s OK,” Coraline pacified as she passed the tablet packaging to him. “It’s an anti-nausea pill. Called something unpronounceable, but all it does is keep me balanced and upright while I’m here.”

When the doctor raised his eyebrows questioningly, she added; “I get seasick…and airsick. And I’m on a flying boat.”

“Ah,” He hummed his understanding as he squinted at the writing on the foil packaging.  His eyes flashed with something dark, something that completely contradicted the calm, quiet persona Coraline had gotten to know over the past six hours.

She sucked in a breath in apprehension. Banner looked up, brushed the angry expression from his features with ease, and then handed her the package back.

“I’m not your doctor, not really a doctor at all – not a medical one at least, but if I were you, don’t take any more of those tablets.”

“What, why?” Coraline held the tablets gently, her pulse starting to speed up as she thought of all the pills that she’d already ingested.

“Just a feeling,” Banner didn’t do a good job of mollifying her. “S.H.I.E.L.D don’t usually hand out drugs of their own making without a motive, and no offense but I really don’t think you’re considered important enough to receive special treatment.”

“Touché,” Coraline said quietly.

The room quietened as the historian put the tablets back into their pocket untouched, and the scientist fiddled with another of the instruments awkwardly.

Coraline was just about to attempt to break the silence, when he arrived.

The guards flanked him, their helmets and guns unnerving the historian as she watched them through the window. The sounds of their boots raised Dr. Banner from his work, and so the both of them watched from behind the door as the God of Tricks was frogmarched passed.

His hair was lank, and mixed with his complexion it made the man appear almost sickly. That image though didn’t reach his eyes, which sparkled with malice as he met the gaze of the two doctors behind the glass.

His gait was even, calculated, confident. The leer of his mouth looked almost as if he was laughing, but the silence other than the stomp of the guards’ footsteps meant that what could have been humour was instead translated as hatred, pure and simple.

Loki looked past Coraline without even a passing gaze. Instead his eyes locked on Banner’s before he was forced forwards by the guns at his back.

Coraline glanced at Bruce, and watched as he breathed in shakily and removed his glasses to run a hand over his face.

“Are you OK?” She asked.

Bruce jumped in his clearly agitated state.

“Yeah,” He forced a smile as he moved towards one of the computers, and the light that was flashing by it.

“Dr. Banner,” A voice that Coraline recognised as that of belonging to Deputy Director Hill echoed from the speaker as Banner pressed a button. “Please report to the Bridge immediately. You are required for debriefing.”

Coraline laughed as Bruce stifled a groan and dramatically raised his arms in frustration. She liked this version of the doctor far more than the reserved, eerily calm version he seemed to project most of the time.

As if reading her thoughts, Banner’s demeanour changed and the smile in his eyes ebbed away. He pushed his glasses back up his nose as he headed towards the door.  Coraline saw her chance.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” She grabbed his arm as he went passed her, and used her other to tentatively pat his shoulder. “You looked really…I don’t know…shaken up, kind of… back there and you’ve really helped me relax as I certainly wasn’t calm when I first came in here so if you’re not calm… or maybe need someone to talk too or…”

She faded off as Bruce placed his hands on her shoulders and smiled.

“I am OK, Coraline. Don’t worry. I have to go but can you keep an eye on the scan for me. I shouldn’t be long.”

Coraline let herself smile, as happily and assuredly as she could manage.

“Sure, as long as you are OK?”

“I’m fine,” Bruce called out as he paced down the corridor towards the bridge.

“I’m not,” Coraline said to herself as she looked at the ID card in her hand, the one with specialist clearance and Bruce’s name on the front. “I am going to be in so much trouble.”

She bit her lip in a last minute loss on confidence, before she collected herself together, slipped Bruce’s pickpocketed ID into her own card holder, and set off in the opposite direction, towards the holding cell and the God smirking inside.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again, this is a long chapter to make up for the long wait between this and the last (sorry!). Also, exciting news, this fic now has its first fan art, which I will try and link to next time! It really helped as motivation to get this chapter finished, and the next already half done, so you will definitely hear more about this once I work out how to do it! 
> 
> Once again folks, please do tell me what you think of this. All opinions, good or bad, very much appreciated! Also in terms of the changing character perspectives, do you guys find that jarring or have I got the balance right? 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.
> 
> Enjoy!

Coraline was not a rebellious person. The explosion, the grounding after and the nightmares that had reminded her of her one moment of rebellion over and over for most of her teenage years had seen to that. After the accident she had gotten quieter and more resigned, until her parents and the farmhands had all but forgotten the girl who tinkered with machinery and jumped off haystacks while insisting she could fly.

The historian was remembering those moments though, as she pressed herself against the wall of a side corridor and watched Fury pace passed.  The stolen ID card left dents in her palm as she clutched it, its surface damp with the sweat from her palms. Coraline’s body was terrified, but her mind was clear in its certainty that she needed in.

She waited until the sound of Fury’s boots on the floor had completely disappeared. Then she extracted herself from her hiding space and moved to stand in front of the doors to the cell room.

The doors were large and without windows. The metal looked heavier than any other door on the ship, though Coraline imagined that was more her imagination and apprehension than anything else. She paid them only a minute’s peace of mind before she turned all her attention to finding the keypad, and getting closer to what was behind it.

When Bruce had briefed her on who exactly Loki was, and when they’d both received word of exactly what it was he had been doing in Germany, Coraline’s interest had peaked to a level now causing this moment of craziness.

A wannabee tyrannical dictator proclaiming his superiority and forcing a smattering of German people to bow down to him: for a historian like Coraline, that was like a moth to a flame.

It is a badly disguised secret that historians want to meet dictators. Not all of them, of course, but for modern historians and war historians alike, if asked for the person they would most want to meet from the past, most of them would name a dictator. Coraline was among this number. To get into the mind of the most famous of the 19th and 20th centuries dictators and royals, to find out how the ticked and what caused them to commit the acts they did, that was as much her fantasy as any other historian she had worked with.

So, when she had heard about Loki – about what he had said and what he had done – she had felt like the 8 year old in the war bunker again, knowing what she was about to do was 100% not allowed, and doing it anyway because of her own damned curiosity.

The keypad required retina recognition.

Coraline swore under her breath. The key card that also needed to be swiped was now a useless stolen item, and she couldn’t even use her own eye scan and hope to confuse the machine with it and the card of someone with higher clearance, because she was such a low clearance that an an eye scan hadn’t even been done.

There was also no way to plead ignorance and knock on the door, because after seeing how easy the god behind it could manipulate loyal agents, Fury had ordered that no personnel remain inside the room. Loki was being monitored by CCTV cameras at every angle, but agents would only enter the room under orders straight from the Director.

“Dammit,” Coraline reeled away from the door.

She was seething. It was dumb to get so mad - she knew that, but in equal parts she didn’t care. Her situation wasn’t good. Even if she was convincing herself she was coping, she was still scared and nervous and tired from sleepless nights spent worrying about where she had been for the gap in her memory.  She had been behaving as agents should and doing as they do, and then there was a chance for the historian part of her – the familiar, neglected part of her personality – to shine.

A dictator – an actual, living dictator in training was behind one heavy door and the glass of a fishbowl. And she couldn’t get to him.

CRUNCH.

Coraline jumped at the noise. She looked down at the keypad – now beeping incessantly where the retina scanner was mangled. Then she looked at her hand. More specifically, she looked at her fist.

Her first thought was that it was the second time she’d punched something in under a week –the first being Coulson who was (thankfully) significantly less breakable.

Her second thought, as she inspected the broken scanner, was that she definitely hadn’t been taking part in any of the offered combat classes in the ship’s gym, and so where the hell had she learnt to punch with such force?

Cora flexed her hand experimentally and hissed.  Her knuckles were covered in small cuts from the plastic of the scanner. They stung as she moved her fist around.

“Huh,” Coraline said to herself.

“Oww!” She then yelled as she slammed her fist into the nearest wall, and remembered for the second time that she hadn’t taken any combat classes.

The wall next to the scanner was as smooth as it had been before she’d attempted to punch a dent into it. The scanner was in pieces.

Coraline looked from one to the other, then down at her hands. She was about to repeat the motion when she remembered why she had broken the scanner in the first place.

The door slid open as she swiped Bruce’s key card.

The hiss of the metal shutting behind her covered the sound of her footsteps as she snuck into the room.

Coraline got halfway up the stairs before realising how dumb she looked. She wasn’t a rebellious eight year old anymore, however much she felt like it internally. For the final few steps upwards she made a concerted effort to walk normally – less like a member of Mystery Inc when searching for monsters.

Her steady steps and laid back shoulders almost made her look confident as she climbed to the top of the steps, that was until she saw him.

He was watching her, in a way that made the historian shudder inwardly. His eyes were calculating, eyeing her up as she stepped up onto the raised platform and stared into his cell.

More than anything, Coraline wanted to turn tail and run, just like she had done from the bunker all those years ago. The cell room was the tantalising forbidden space and the god in front of her was the spider in the dark that made her run.

Last time running hadn’t worked out so well for her. This time she was going to try something new.

**aAa**

As part of her university degree, and the masters and PhD that followed, Coraline had had to conduct interviews. Oral history was not her favourite by any stretch, but in many cases it a vital part of contextual analysis and that meant many trips to nursing homes and Legion meetings over her years of study. It also meant that she had gotten good at getting the information she needed quickly, through a simple 5 part system.

Coraline moved to directly in front of the god behind the glass, then slunk down into sitting cross-legged.

Time for Step 1 : Introductions

“Hello,” She waved, and noticed the brief moment of surprise cross Loki’s face before it was ironed out by the god into a look of boredom.

““My name is Coraline. I am a historian, from…uh…London.”

Usually she would state her university, museum or other research position. In this case, with none of that applying, she quickly found herself improvising.

“Do you have historians where you come from? I assume you do, your society sounds far more advanced than ours and someone has to document that. I should imagine your exploits have a historian in a stuffy room somewhere tearing their hair out right about now.”

It was hard to flatter a god, but when it came to oral history interviews, flattery did get you everywhere and so she had to try.

“I heard about what you have done – since getting here, I mean.”

She looked up at the god on the other side of the glass, seeing if anything she had said so far had caused a response. He looked as bored as ever, but he hadn’t turned away. Yet.

 “I have some questions, about your ideological standpoint and individual motivations,” Still nothing, so Coraline decided to change tactics.

“Normally at this point I would ask if you were free to answer some questions but you’re literally just standing here, and I don’t see anyone else coming to entertain you so…”

Loki bristled at this, no doubt planning all means of destruction on the woman sitting before him and gesturing around the cell room with nonchalance. Before Coraline could continue, he moved directly in front of the glass, looking down on her with malice.

Loki smiled a toothy smirk as he laughed – the noise breaking the silence sharply. 

“Interesting strategy.  I would have thought an agency with such prowess would have thought of something more complex than a simple ruse, but then again you Midgardians are so banal.”

Coraline looked confused for a minute before her eyes widened with realisation.

“Oh no, S.H.I.E.L.D didn’t send me. I don’t even really work for them.”

“Your uniform suggests otherwise,” the prickling of his eyes on her skin multiplied as he looked her up and down.

Coraline glanced at her lap, and the ill-fitting skirt that adorned it.  

“Touché,” She admitted. “Honestly though, I’m not even meant to be in here. I…uh…I don’t have the clearance.”

“And yet here you are,” Loki's attention had clearly been caught.  

“Yeah, I think technically I broke in,” Coraline looked sheepish as she said it, before muttering:  “My fist certainly feels like I broke in.”

Inside, her mind was spinning as she tried to remember the steps and work out which one she was on. The second step was usually discussing the interviewee’s current situation. Discussing the weather, the quality of the scones being served or lightness of the room the interview was taking place in, worked wonders for getting the conversation started.

Here though there really wasn’t anything to discuss, and so Coraline was debating this internally until realising that in all her worrying about steps, she had let her interviewee direct the conversation, and when the interviewee was a potentially psychopathic god hell-bent on destruction, she’d really rather maintain control.

“Right,” She clapped her hands together as she raised her voice, “ To recap, I’m not meant to be here but am, usually work as a historian but currently work for S.H.I.E.L.D, and I have some questions for you. Ready?”

Loki coked an eyebrow. Coraline ignored him .

“From an ideological standpoint, would you align with an authoritarian method of ruling.”

Loki scoffed and began to turn away.  Coraline glared.

“I’ve dealt with enough school visits at the museum to not be intimidated by 30+ teenagers, Loki. You acting like a petulant teen will do nothing to stop me, however much it might make you feel better.”

“You know nothing of me or my methods,” Loki snapped.

“Well yeah,” Coraline replied, “ That’s the point of me asking you about them. Shall I phrase it differently? How about this: do you want to take over this planet?”

“I have killed more people in the last week than will have ever visited you little museum. You world will not be taken over, it will be exsanguinated.”

“Exsanguinated – that’s a big word for someone grossly overestimating their own prowess.”

Loki bristled and moved to speak. Coraline didn’t give him the opportunity.

“I am the great and powerful Loki,” Coraline mimicked the god, making her voice deep and gravelly. “I am mysterious and no one can understand me, don’t make me sound like a dweeb.”

Internally, the sensible part of Coraline’s mind was screaming at her to not annoy the powerful megalomaniac any further, for the love of God! Coraline ignored the screaming as she continued. She _really_ hated oral history interviews.

“80 people in two days – big woop. You do realise that that number is pretty pathetic.  I mean kudos for trying, you definitely ruffled some feathers and ruined some lives, but if we’re talking devastation and oh, what was the word you used, oh yes that’s right ‘ _exsanguination_ ’, then you’ve got a long way to go yet. I mean 80 in the two days you’ve been here is 40 day, but when you compare that to say, I don’t know, Stalin, even with my poor maths his figure is more like 4000 a day on average.”

“Your Midgardian squabbles mean nothing. Your world will know nothing of the destruction I will bring upon it.”

“You mean world war?” Coraline looked up at Loki, her eyes wide. She held the pose for a second before rolling her eyes.

“There have been two of them in the last century alone. What else have you got?”

**aAa**

The lab was busy with the sound of instruments now on overdrive, due to the smatterings of Stark tech powering them around the room. Banner and Stark worked at their respective stations, or rather Banner worked while Stark wandered around the lab, moving things and fiddling with equipment.

The genius stopped as he reached the collection of snacks left by Coraline. He flicked an empty packet onto the floor, before snatching up a blueberry packet and grunting appreciatively.

“Are we expecting someone?” He asked as he opened the packet.

“What?” Bruce looked up from the sceptre and seemed to suddenly notice the historian’s absence.

“Dr. Quinn should be here actually…” He looked around puzzled, as if Coraline could have somehow eluded them for the full time they’d been in the lab.

“She probably just went out for fresh air…why are you smiling like that?”

Stark’s grin faltered for a second as he realised Banner wasn’t sharing his joke, before it broke out again with full wattage.

“You don’t realise…Dr. Quinn…” he paused, waiting for a response he didn’t receive. “Dr Quinn… as in Colorado Belle, Medicine Woman.”

Bruce stared at him. Stark blinked and then ate another handful of blueberries.

“Never mind, wrong crowd. Anything on the sceptre?”

Banner waves the scanner over the sceptre before glancing at the readings.

“The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's going to take weeks to process.”

Tony flicked more switches on his personal computer screen as he passed it.

“If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops.”

“All I packed was a tooth brush,” Bruce muttered.

Tony looked up at him before smiling.

“You know,” he said, “You should come by Stark Towers sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it; it’s candy land.”

Banner managed a dry chuckle.

“Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem.”

Tony joined Bruce behind the sceptre as he countered:

“Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises.”

The jab was quick, straight into Banner’s side with a FZZTT.

  “Ow!” Bruce exclaims as Tony looks at Banner intently.

“Dr. Banner,” Steve’s voice trailed in from the hallway, “Have you seen Coraline, as I can’t find her…Hey, are you nuts?!”

Tony didn’t look up as the Captain strode into the room, his face stormy.

“Jury’s out. Nothing?” He turned to Banner instead.

 “You really have got a lid on it, haven’t you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?”

“Is everything a joke to you?” Steve accused.

Tony shrugged his fury off with ease: “Funny things are.”

“Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny.”

Realising his tone, Steve turned to Banner, “No offense, doctor.”

Banner waved him off.

“No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things.”

“You’re tiptoeing, big man,” Tony crowed. “You need to strut.”

“And you need to focus on the problem, Mr Stark,” Steve interjected.

“You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables.”

As much as he didn’t want to associate this man currently rubbing him the wrong way with mirth, and the historian currently unaccounted for somewhere on board, Steve couldn’t help hear Coraline asking very similar questions as the one Stark was posing. He didn’t want to admit that the egotistical engineer in front of him had a point, but Coraline’s disappearance, and her won confusion about what had happened during it made him falter.

“You think Fury's hiding something?” Steve’s curiosity won over his sense of loyalty momentarily.

Tony’s response confirmed to the Captain that he and the historian were on the same page indeed.

“He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets… It's bugging him too, isn't it?

Banner looked up on realising the conversation had been swayed back to him. His answer was nervous, as if he was trying to think of a way back from the potentially dangerous road he was heading down, even as he spoke the words.

“Uh...I just want to finish my work here and...”

“Doctor?” Steve prompted.

Banner paused, before sighing and conceding to his own internal doubts.

“'A warm light for all mankind, Loki's jab at Fury about the cube.”

“I heard it,” Steve said cautiously.

“Well, I think that was meant for you.” Banner pointed at Tony and was offered a blueberry in response. He took one before continuing.

“Even if Barton didn’t tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news.”

“The Stark Tower? That big ugly -” On remembering who he was standing opposite Steve toned it down “- building in New York?

Bruce nodded, “It’s powered by Stark Reactors: a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?”

“That’s just a prototype,” Tony muttered, before clearly not resisting the urge to brag and turning to Steve.

“I’m kind of the only name in clean energy right now.

Banner ignored him as he continued with his point.

“So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?”

“I should probably look into that,” Tony crossed over to a different screen, and then fiddled with his phone, “Once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files.

Steve couldn’t hide his shock this time.

“I’m sorry, did you say...?”

Tony seemed to revel in the Captain’s aghast expression.

“Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide…Blueberry?”

Steve scoffed. “Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?”

Tony didn’t rise to the bait, merely stating:

“An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome.”

“I think Loki's trying to wind us up,” Steve wouldn’t be deterred. “This is a man who means to start a war, and if don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them.”

Tony looked at Steve for a minute, before turning to the flat screen behind him, which was flashing.

“Following is not really my style,” he commented as he tapped the screen curiously.

“And you're all about style, aren't you?” Steve scoffed.

Tony stiffened for a millisecond before turning back to the captain.

“Of the people in this room, which one is; A) wearing a spangly outfit, and B) not of use?”

Bruce looked up from the sceptre as he felt the atmosphere in the room shift. The captain and the billionaire faced off: Rogers’ eyes steely, Stark’s filled with a practiced nonchalance. The physicist was about to intervene, if only to end the tension before it could grow further.  The beeping of the screen beat him to it.

Tony broke eye contact to look at the screen, and after expanding a part of the data, hummed in interest.

“Speaking of style, following is clearly not hers either.”

He tapped another button and the blue of the screen was replaced by a black and white CCTV feed.  Both Steve and Bruce recognised the glass cell and the god inside it. But it was only as Tony pointed at the figure sitting cross legged in front of the glass that both men realised they recognised them too.

“Cora?” Steve said at the same time that Bruce said: “Dr. Quinn?”

“Wait, this is Dr. Quinn?” Tony fiddled with the screen until the recognisable croon of Loki’s voice flooded the lab.

“You seem nervous, Midgardian. Where are your words and over confident sneers now?”

The scientists and Steve watched as on the screen, Coraline stood and looked around. She looked small, and even through the screen the slight shaking of her hands could clearly be seen.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just very conscious that by now someone will probably have realised by now that I am not where I am supposed to be.”

“You fear the wrath of your superiors over mine?” Loki followed Coraline’s movements with the look of a predator following its prey.  He watched as the historian scanned the room, and narrowed his eyes as she turned back to him and made eye contact.

“Of course I do. So far all you’ve shown to be is a wannabee dictator with no concept of math. At least Fury can estimate amounts.”

From the other side of the camera, Steve gaped in disbelief. The Coraline he saw on the screen was nothing like the one he had left in the corridor a few floors up, let alone the woman he had come to know before this mess had started. Where there had been confusion, now there was confidence. Where there had been fear, there was now a fiery determination that was standing up to a god. As much as Steve could admire this newfound strength, it did nothing to ease the twist in his gut that wrenched with every reminder that she was in a room, alone and currently antagonising a megalomaniac.

“Oh, I like her,” Tony chuckled as he surreptitiously searched the historian’s name through S.H.I.E.L.D’s database.

“With timing in mind then,” Coraline continued on the screen, “I figured we’d talk about the long term.”

“Your species need not concern yourself with that,” Loki interjected.

“Sure, sure, you’re gonna wipe us all out. But then where will the corn come from?”

“What?”

“Well, you’ve got an army, right?” Coraline explained slowly. “No one tries to take over without an army. But if you destroy all of us, who’s going to feed your army? Where will they live? Your hat may look like a goat but I can hardly imagine you tending livestock. Unless they maybe don’t need to eat, but I mean who doesn’t need to eat, it’s not as if soldiers run on some universal battery or something.”

“Silence,” Loki snapped. Coraline stopped her ramble with a gasp. “Your incessant chatter is beyond irksome.  The needs of my army are not of my concern just as they are not of yours. Whatever means they require will be subservient to my needs of them.”

Coraline bit her lip as she tried to work out work she was missing. She looked the god up and down, before snapping her fingers in realisation.

“They’re not your army, are they? That’s why you don’t know about their needs. You’ve borrowed them off someone.”

“I. Do. Not. Borrow.”

“Well you can’t have taken them, that’d be ridiculously stupid. Trying to force an entire population to fight for you always ends badly. It’s a textbook stupid leader mad on power mistake to make. Literally never works, and even with you I’d have thought that would have been a bit too far on the idiot scale.”

Coraline began to pace, her hands gesticulating as she exaggerated her thinking process.

“So you don’t borrow, can’t be stupid enough to take, so that lead only one thing.”

She turned back to the god behind the glass and stood tall with her arms crossed.

The room was as silent as it had been since Coraline had entered, but for the men watching her on the screen, the quiet reached new depths, before it was broken by the historian raising one eyebrow and stating:

“You made a deal.”

**aAa**

“What is she doing?” Steve barked the question more like an order as he watched Loki and Coraline face off.

“Stalling, maybe?” Bruce offered.

“Nope,” Tony didn’t look up from his phone.

“‘Nope’?” Steve turned to him, his voice terse.

“She’s too smart for that. She’ll have a plan, if these test scores are anything to go by.”

Stark showed his phone to Banner, who’s eyes widened slightly in response. The genius snatched the phone back before Steve could look at it, but the captain’s quick eyes still caught sight of the now familiar S.H.I.E.L.D logo and the bold font proclaiming the document as: PRIVATE.

“Is that her file?” Steve snapped.

“Uhh, yes,” Stark looked at him blankly. “I feel we’re going in circles here. Decryption programmer, secure files, accessing to find out what’s going on…”

“That is private,” The captain bit off from between gritted teeth.

“Well you don’t have to read it,” Stark quipped back. And then more to himself: “That’s an awful lot of redacted information for a temporary consultant.”

Inwardly, Steve wanted nothing more than to grab the phone from Stark – or demand that he finish the decryption and then hand it over, if only to catch some of the answers Coraline had been chasing about herself.

Outwardly though, he was too busy looking up as a screeching alarm began to drone over the lab and hallways beyond. Lights swung down to bathe the lab in a red hue, while the screen previously showing Coraline flashed instead to black with the phrase ‘CELL BREACH’, emblazoned in red bold print.

In the cell itself, Coraline flinched as the sirens started. Loki noticed this, and leered.

“Time to flee, I should think,” He commented.

“Yeah, good plan. First though, please tell me the deal you made was good.”

Coraline forced herself to stop looking around, and focus on the god instead. Up close, and especially on mentioning the deal, the god looked almost sickly – standing rigidly but also refusing to make eye contact.

“Oh no,” Coraline said softly as she watched him. “You didn’t, did you? You made a bad deal.”

Loki remained silent.

“Deals rarely work. Hitler and Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, Hitler and pretty much anywhere really. Even the Allies had some issues with deals, especially after the war ended. Most of the time they fall through, or get changed, or somewhere down the line someone brings the deal back out to force a hand. But deals, they work even less when they’re badly made.”

The god continued to remain stoic. Coraline wrung her hands as she vocalised her thought process in the hopes it would take her less time to find an answer.

“Bad deals get made a number of ways, usually with lying but as much as I’ve mocked your intelligence, I’m sure you’d notice if you were being lied to so it can’t have been that. Sometimes leaders make bad deals because it looks like it will help their country, but you don’t really seem like a nationalist – very much a loose cannon – so it can’t be that either. So…”

And she paused at this as she looked up and down at the stiffly standing god, and then winced in realisation and pity.

“So you were forced, weren’t you? Forced to take a bad deal because it was better than the alternative. Oh you poor, poor man.”

Loki was taken back by the woman’s response. Though she had mocked him, only fuelling the anger pooling within him, now she was sincere, and she was sorry. Her eyes were clear with understanding, and it made him swallow the snapping response he had lined up. Whoever this Midgardian was, she was sympathising with him. She was either weaker or stronger than he had estimated, but as they stood, staring at each other, both in a new light, he doubted either knew quite which it was.

Shouting from outside the holding cell doors forced Coraline to turn first, and with it the prickling feeling of Loki’s gaze on her skin was renewed.

She didn’t give him a final glance as she made for the exit. If she had done, she would have seen the open curiosity in his face fade to a calculated stare.

As she snuck out of the door and off down the hallway, she didn’t hear his laugh, or see his smile, or sense the changing danger in the air.

__


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! A new chapter and potentially another before the week is out as I’m trying to write enough before moving to a new city for university that I’ll have enough to post for a while should life get more hectic!   
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

She made it all of two paces before she was forced up against the corridor wall by a whirlwind toned in red.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Natasha ‘s hands dug into Cora’s shoulders as she seethed.

Coraline was in two minds about how to respond. On the one hand, she was still feeling  the residual sassiness from her encounter with the God, and so would have happily snapped back with just as much fire in her eyes. On the other hand though, she had heard the rumours and watched the way the Widow walked, and neither of those things suggested it be a good idea to tangle with the assassin when there wasn’t barrier between them.

“You have jeopardised everyone on board. Do you understand? Every single person in danger because you couldn’t help but break into the only place secure enough to keep the prisoner. You hold no authority, have no skills or purpose as part of this crew, and you have just threatened the lives of hundreds of innocent people who do. Have you any idea how irresponsible you are?”

Coraline snapped. With Loki she was the 8 year old chasing shadows in tunnels: curious, snarky, but still mindful and cautious of monsters lying in wait. Now though, now she was fire.

Her eyes narrowed. Her body tensed.

“I didn’t ask for a character analysis Romanoff, but seeing as you have so generously offered one, now you can kindly let me go, before I make you.

Natasha raised an eyebrow incredulously, before accompanying her reponse with another shove of the historian against the wall.

“That’s an empty threat and you know it, Quinn. Stand. Down.”

“Or what?” Coraline retorted, almost shouting as she pushed back against the spy’s grip.  “You’ll lock me up against my will? I’m on a flying ship in the middle of the sea, and the only way out I’ve been offered is a transfer to another, probably heavy security, base. Experiment on me and mess with my memories? I’m only kidding myself that it hasn’t happened and am just hoping whatever I’m repressing isn’t as awful as I worry it could be. Will you alter my way of living so things will never be the same again?”

Coraline pushed, and the force of her anger made the assassin skid backwards slightly before she regained her balance. Coraline didn’t let her get close again, standing firm with hands momentarily raised in front of her before she lowered them and continued, her tone dejected now rather than fierce.

“Your organisation turned my life upside down a month ago when they came to me in a museum about a defrosted comic book character with shell shock and a shield. I was ripped from everything I knew and everything that was safe, and nothing, nothing you could threaten me could be worse than that.”

The corridor was silent. Natasha regarded the historian with schooled caution. She watched as Cora took a few seconds to compose herself

“You have an interrogation to be getting to. Loki was manipulated by a third party and has been backed into a bad deal. For some that would incite some form of sympathy, but I really don’t think that’s S.H.I.E.L.D’s style, do you?”

Cora didn’t wait for a response. Natasha didn’t stop her as she turned and walked away.

**aAa**

Steve hadn’t bothered with pleasantries as he had left the lab. Even though this new Coraline seemed to be able to hold her own, the cell breach warning had meant the video of her had been cut off, and in that time, his frenzied mind supplied, anything could have happened.

The blaring alarms and red lights of the corridors had turned off by the time he reached the cell level. Indeed the corridors were quiet as he paced down them, his stomach filled with unease.

He heard Coraline before he saw her. She hissing in pain, and after rushing the last corner Steve found the source of the noise to be correlating whenever the woman prodded the knuckles of her right hand.

On hearing Steve’s audible intake of breath, Coraline looked up and pushed away from the wall she had been leaning against.

“Hi,” She said softly.

Steve was in her personal space before she’d finished talking. He took her bruised hand in his and watched as she winced. After dropping that he looked her up and down, before taking her cheek in his hand and turned her head to look into her eyes.

“Hey,” She objected, before pushing him away with as much force as she could manage.

“Are you alright? Did he hurt you? What did he do?” Steve’s flurry of questions bombarded the historian as she tried to keep up.

“I’m fine, what are you talking about?” Realisation dawned in her eyes. “Oh…you saw that?”

“Saw it? Cora the whole ship saw you chatting away to that psychopath,” Steve exclaimed, before softening his voice as he asked: “What were you thinking?”

Coraline flinched at the familiar question. Steve, of course, noticed and was almost rushing back towards her, but was stopped by Cora’s outstretched arms.

“Steve, stop –" the historian lowered her arms – “Loki didn’t do anything to me, in fact out of everyone on this ship he is one of a select number that haven’t harmed, threatened or psychologically damaged me in some way.”

“No,” Steve shook his head in disbelief. “He must have done something, manipulated you or tricked you or something.”

Cora crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“And why would you think that?”

“Because of this,” Steve gestured to her posture, “You’re acting differently, you’re…you’re…”

“Confident?” Coraline lowered her arms, her voice soft again.

She sighed as she saw Steve’s expression, resolute but with confusion ebbing at the edges.  Being careful of her still smarting knuckles, she took his hands in hers.

“This is me, Steve, “She squeezed her hands in his as he made eye contact. “I am talkative and inquisitive and sometimes reckless. It’s why I explored the bunker when I was eight, and it was why I talked to Loki now, at twenty five.”

Steve made to interject, but Cora didn’t let him.

“I know that, for the most part, the version of me that you have gotten to know isn’t that person. I have been meek and shy and scared of my own shadow since the day in the museum where I was plucked from my life and set down to spin away in a different one. And when I get scared, I tend to go on autopilot.”

She pauses, bites her lip. “It…uh…it has happened before. Someone noticed then and got me help so I could cope with it, the fear I mean. And I had been coping, excelling really, but all the change, and the guns and all the rest, it… it scared me again.”

Looking down, Cora realised that Steve had twisted their hands, so now his were clutching hers.

“Are you alright now?” He asked, gently.

Cora nodded.

“Yeah, I just, I don’t know I just snapped out of it.” Her brow furrowed.

“I was talking to Dr. Banner and once he had to go I just felt…” She paused in thought, before her eyes opened wide in a mix of realisation and horror. “Son of a –”

She extracted her hands from Steve’s so that she could reach into her utility belt. Steve watched as she opened a pocket and scrunched the tablet box into her palm.

When she looked back at Steve, her face was pale but her eyes were burning.

“I really, really hate this organisation,” She dropped the crumpled cardboard into Steve’s palm, and his own eyes widened before narrowing in fury.

“Come on,” He grabbed her arm and began to walk, no, march, back down the corridor.

“What? Where are we going?” Coraline jogged to keep up, remembering the first time they had walked arm in arm back when sneaking out of the Triquetra was the most dangerous thing she had considered doing.

“Fury wouldn’t know honesty if it punched him in the face,” Steve slowed so that Coraline could catch up. “I’ve never liked bullies and I hate liars.”

“So…”

“So we’re going to find the answers to our questions, and hope that there is enough of S.H.I.E.L.D standing after we do to resolve the threats they’ll have no doubt caused.”

Coraline looked at the man in front of her, at the determination in his eyes and the anger that stiffened his stance. Slowly, she moved her arm away from his grip, and when he released it self-consciously, she took his hand and squeezed reassuringly.

“Lead the way, Captain Rogers,” She said with a conspiratorial smile.

**aAa**

Coraline had slipped into the lab with about as much subtlety as an elephant. In her defence, she was trying to sneak past two geniuses and a super spy, which was probably why she managed all of two steps before she was noticed.

“You’re supposed to be locating the Tesseract. And you –” He turned to catch Coraline mid sideways step and pointed at her accusingly “– you are meant to be keeping out of the way with your mouth shut.”

“Bite me,” Cora muttered to the chagrin of Stark and shock of Banner. The physicist recovered quickly though, and interrupted Fury before he could retaliate.

“We are locating the Tesseract. The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile.

“You'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss.” Tony added as he drew his gaze from the historian now sitting cross legged on a spare lab bench, and instead to the monitor flashing in front of him.

“What is PHASE 2?”

Steve nodded to Coraline as he entered the lab. They had found the weapons together, more because that was where Steve was going than because she was actually useful to the effort. Upon their discovery, his ragged breathing and poorly concealed clenched fists had been all Cora had needed to see. She had touched his shoulder, smiled sadly when he looked up, and then gave him his space.

Apparently he hadn’t needed much. The weapon clattered as it was dropped onto the nearest table.

“PHASE 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D uses the cube to make weapons,” Steve clipped as he turned to Stark.

“Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow.”

Fury stalled.

“Rogers, we collected everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're...”

Coraline scoffed from her position.

“No archiving, no labels, no system of organisation. Collection my ass.”

“Perhaps you should stop interfering with things beyond your skillset, Miss Quinn,” Fury retorted.

He turned back to Steve.

“We felt it pertinent to analyse all aspects of Tesseract technology, in case we are faced with it should Loki use it for the same purposes.”

“I'm sorry, Nick,” Tony swivelled the computer screen in the director’s direction. “What were you lying?”

Coraline gasped as she watched the animation for a missile run on the screen. Steve appeared to echo her horror.

 “I was wrong, director,” He bit out. “The world hasn't changed a bit.”

The tension had shifted, but not dissipated, upon the arrival of Agent Romanoff. She was accompanied by a man Coraline had not met. His frame filled the doorway, and his regal attire was unmissable. The historian titled her head in interest, but was cut off from asking for introductions by a tablet close to her position emitting a beep.

As she looked at the tablet screen, the conversation happening around her faded into the background.    

_“Did you know about this?”_

Her name was at the top of the screen.

_“You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?”_

Below it was a number. A long one. One that was not her National Insurance Number, Student I.D or museum entry code.

_“I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed.”_

Coraline scrolled. Her date of birth, her parents’ names, her family address and her own came next.

_“Loki's manipulating you.”_

Then, a date she recognised only from the whiteboard of the ward she had woken up in at eight years old. Below it was a link.

_“And you've been doing what exactly?”_

Schematics appeared once the link had loaded. Coraline realised she was looking at X-rays – her X-rays. She recognised the metal that had had been placed to stick her back together. She’d been shown those photos multiple times during her recovery, and at every airport the same image had shown up every time she had gone through a scanner.

That had always been odd, because even at that stage in medical procedure, the metal implanted was not usually meant to set off scanners. The next page of information apparently solved that decade long mystery.

_“You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you.”_

X-Rays and even an MRI scan Coraline didn’t remember having filled the screen. With a finger beginning to shake she traced the metal from her leg upwards, across her hip and then down the other. She gulped.

_“Yes, and I'm not leaving because you suddenly get a little twitchy. I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”_

The next image showed a spine, her spine she presumed as the pit in her stomach grew. Like train tracks, fine wires could be seen climbing up the spine of the eight year old version of the historian. The Coraline in the present rolled her shoulders, but as she hadn’t for the past 8 years, she felt nothing.

She skipped the image showing the wires continuing upwards. To think of anything being in her head was enough to raise the bile in her throat.

The final image showed the pin in the arm she was expected, but also one in the other. The nausea rose as the room quietened.

“ _Because of him.”_

Coraline was brought from her horror filled little world by the unfamiliar voice of the new man.            

“Me?” Thor exclaimed as Coraline tried, and failed, to catch up with the conversation.

“Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

Coraline tried to concentrate on Fury’s words, but the screen in front of her beeped again, and despite her dread, she turned her gaze back to it.

_“My people want nothing but peace with your planet.”_

Cora tuned out the argument ensuing entirely as she read.

Below all the X-rays and sickeningly confusing scans was a very official looking form. Cora recognised her parents’ signatures at the bottom, but really wished she didn’t as she read what they had signed. Whatever had been done to her, they had known. Her parents, the Mummy and Daddy of the broken eight year old, had agreed to a covertly offered procedure, and had never once even hinted anything about it. That perhaps she could have forgiven them for. Perhaps it was due to cost, or perhaps the explosion had done more damage than she had ever been told. Perhaps, perhaps…

Except all of those musings were cut short by the logo emblazoned at the top of the document. The very familiar bird logo…

“… You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”

As the conversation around her faded back into focus, Coraline only partially recognised the sound of something breaking.

Bruce was the first to look up. Rogers and Stark took longer to break from staring each other down, and by the time they did they only need follow the line of the physicist’s concerned gaze to see the cause of it.

Cora’s pupils were blown wide as her eyes darted from person to person. The tablet was smashed at her feet.

Her feet crunched the glass as she staggered backwards. Her hands shook. When Bruce took a cautious step towards her, what would have been a whimper changed to a strangled gasp.

“Is she unwell?” Thor questioned as Bruce asked: “Coraline, what’s wrong?”

Inside the historian’s head, any sense of calm had been replaced with alarms bells tolling. S.H.I.E.L.D had been in her life, had been inside her, for far longer than the month she had spent with them. Fury, the man across from her with the blank expression, must know this. Romanoff seemed clued in to most, if not all, that went on on the ship, so surely she knew too. She didn’t know about the newest, caped member of the motley crew, but Banner had dealt with S.H.I.E.L.D before, so what’s to say he hadn’t again. That left Steve. And if Steve knew…

“I’m going to be sick,” Coraline blurted.

No one moved, but no one stopped her as she skittered from her position and fled the room.

Steve watched her leave with the anguish in his eyes that indicated he was about to follow. IN fact, he was already stepping towards the door when the voice of one Tony Stark made him freeze in position.

“You got any more psychopathic dictators hidden on board Fury?” Stark quipped. “If so, I’d tell your agents to man the doors a bit better this time.”

Steve’s worry boiled to anger as he turned back to the inventor and bit out:

“Put on the suit…

**aAa**

Coraline hadn’t been sick. She’d dashed to the nearest open and empty room and had retched over a waste paper basket, but with the realisation that she hadn’t eaten enough to bring back up, also came the realisation that she was no longer nauseous

She leant back again the wall and tried to calm her breathing. Her throat was sore from retching and her knuckles still smarted. That amount of pain though acted as an anchor which she clung to as she talked her thoughts into staying still.

Something had been done to her when she was a child. Something else had presumably been done to her in the time she had been missing. Since then, something S.H.I.E.L.D had been giving her had been keeping her meek. And for all she knew everyone she had come into contact with since being swept up by the organisation could be involved.

“Woah there Cora, put down the tin foil hat,” She muttered to herself.

Even in her own mind she sounded like a conspiracy theorist, and while there was definitely evidence to support her somewhat crazy theory, there was also an element of rationality that she couldn’t just ignore.

Slowly, she got to her feet.  She was going to smooth down her shirt, find some water to wash her mouth out with, and then go back to the lab and confront the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Whatever argument that had been going on would surely have dialled down by now. She could get the answers from the man in the black trench coat and if he tried to lie his way out of she could use the evidence that presumably Tony Stark had dug up to catch him out.

The corridor disoriented her momentarily as she stepped out into it. She couldn’t remember how far she’d ran to get out of the room, and it was only when she heard now familiar voices once again being raised that she found the door to the lab, only a few metres from where she had fled to.

_“The Tesseract belongs on Asgard; no human is a match for it.”_

_“You're not going alone!”_

_“You gonna stop me?”_

_“Put on the suit, let's find out.”_

_“I’m not afraid to hit an old man.”_

_“Put on the suit.”_

Cora reached the doorway, to find the scene almost identical as to how she had left it. Stark and Steve were still arguing, Fury and Natasha were still bearing  unreadable looks, the man in the cape was standing over all of them, Banner was looking at a beeping screen.       

“Oh, my God!” The tone of the physicist made Coraline look at him more closely. The alarm in his voice was evident, and the beeping was getting louder until -

To most people the sound of an explosion would be an unfamiliar noise, so much so that they might not even register an explosion at all until the floor disappears under them or walls rise up to meet them. For those inside the room, even recognising the noise for what it was would not have given them enough time to brace for impact.

For Coraline however, in the split second before she was thrown backwards, she recognised the noise from her dredged up memories. As her head made impact with the rear wall of the corridor, the smell of wet grass and cobweb dust accompanied her fade to darkness


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone. It’s been a very long time, mainly because it turns out moving to the capital, starting university and writing academically in your field really drains the writing juice. But nevertheless here is the next chapter, with the promise of more to come (soon this time).  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

When Coraline had begun her first year at university, she had found it hard to sleep. The 18 year old was used to rural life, where the skies were dark and the only noises were made by owls or crickets or cats, but instead she was faced by the sounds of sirens, of shouting and the constant bright skies of a city under smog.

It was the shouts that always woke her then, and on board the Helicarrier it was shouts that brought her in from the dark behind her eyes.

“Come on Cora, you have to get up!”

Cora tried to cling to the sound, try to work out who it was and what they were doing that was making her shoulders shake and head throb.

“Cap, we have to go!” Another voice was shouting, and there was the sound of crackling too, like someone was standing on tin foil just out of frame.

“I’m not leaving her, not like this,” The first voice softened ever so slightly, but in the next second was back to full volume as the shaking intensified.

“Get up, come on. Up!”

_Up._

That word…it echoed around the historian’s head. Up, up, up, up.

Steve narrowly missed a kick to the gut as the woman in front of him startled into consciousness.

Her eyes roved, her breathing hitched, and the super soldier had to remove one of his hands from her shoulder to instead pin her ankles for fear of another jab to the kidneys. But Coraline was awake, she was breathing and she was blinking beneath his hold and that was enough for Steve.

It took a few seconds for her breathing to steady, her mind to kick back into focus, but as it did she noticed the aching in her temples them, as the smell of dust and smoke and burning that clogged the air around them.

“Explosion?” Cora questioned as she brought a hand to her head. Above her she could see Steve’s concerned expression and behind him, a slightly battered looking Stark.

“Yes,” Stark answered before Steve could. “And judging by the altitude loss it hit an engine.”

“So we’re falling out of the sky,” Coraline’s voice was calm – very different from the visage the historian had been putting out when she had rushed out what felt like hours before.

“Yes, currently.”

Steve glared at Stark for his blunt reply, but Cora remained unfazed as she shrugged off Steve’s hold and braced against the wall behind her for support.

“Can we fix it?”

Steve interrupted.

“You should see a medic, Cora.”

“What,” She scrunched her eyes in confusion, before the involuntary flinch as Steve brushed his fingers against her temple reminded her why her head hurt, why every movement of said head brought with it the slight tang of metallic red in her nostrils, why a medic might not be so bad an idea.

Another jolt of the floor under their feet, and the spitting of computer systems back in the room she had so quickly vacated minutes before reminded her why going anywhere near S.H.I.E.L.D’s doctors was out of the question.

“It’s fine,” Her voice was frail, which she cursed as she continued because why couldn’t she sound strong just once when she needed to lie convincingly. “If what you say is true Mr Stark, there will be people who will have a greater need of medical attention.”

Steve’s shoulders sagged as he conceded to her point. Stark, however…

“You’re very well spoken for someone who couldn’t stand upright a few seconds ago.”

“You’re very aware of the inner workings of a flying aircraft carrier for someone who got thrown into a wall recently,” Coraline retorted, before another pang to her temple made her raised eyebrow expression crumple.

“That is what happened right?” She asked more softly, “We all got thrown?”

“Yes,” Steve replied equally quietly, while Stark spoke over him:

“I’m allowed to know a lot about engineering, I’m an engineering genius. No explosion has or will ever change that. Genius is as genius does. You on the other hand –”

“As much as I’d really like to see where you are going with that conversation,” Cora said with just enough ire for both the super soldier and the scientist to know exactly where she thought the conversation was headed, “ Shouldn’t we be doing something, to help or to fix the engine or –”

Both Stark and Rogers straightened as tinny shouts reverberated in their ear pieces.

Cora hadn’t been given one, just another way in which she had been kept in the dark, she noted with tired frustration. So she could only wait as the high pitched mumbling ended, was replaced by a slightly deeper set of barks, and for Tony to reply with a determined: “I’m on it!”

“The engine that got hit could be functional again,” Stark explained as they began to half walk half shuffle along the corridor, avoiding debris and being ever mindful of the shaky steps Coraline was trying to hide that she was taking.  “They can’t usually do repairs while the ship is airborne, but then they don’t usually have me on board.”

In better circumstances Steve would have rolled his eyes at this. This time he gritted his teeth and stomped the kindling of a fire out with his boot.

“I…we, “Tony corrected, “We need to get to engine 3 to see what is stopping the rotors from turning, and fix it.”

“How much did that pain you to simplify that explanation?” Coraline asked as she brought up the rear. A glance back by Stark confirmed his suspicions that she was smirking.

“Go on,” She irked with a humorous glint in her eye, “Throw in some technical words, get it out of your system.”

“I can’t work out if you’re witty or just concussed, Quinn” Stark responded as he focussed back on the path in front of him.

“Now isn’t the time for jokes, Stark,” Steve snapped as his patience wore ever thinner.

“Hey, don’t look at me. It’s all Gallows Humour back there.”

Cora had the decency to look a little sheepish when Steve turned his attention to her, but that look was forced from her features as the ship groaned in expectation, and the following tilting motion caused the historian to stagger into the nearest wall with a thud.

“Son of a-” Cora muttered as she slowly unfolded her crumpled legs to return to the upright position.

She hated boats, because of the feel of the engines rocking beneath her. She hated planes because she insisted she could feel the clouds being bumped over beneath her feet. Both things made her stomach lurch and her brain freeze with nerves. Combining both while also sporting a headache the size of a small nation was doing her body absolutely no favours.

When someone grabbed her arm as the next lurch tipped her sideways, she automatically assumed it was Steve. Cora looked up at the angle she realised had become practiced to allow her eyes to meet those of the taller soldier.

Instead her eyes met those of the man she’d begun to study in her history of weapons manufacture module all those years ago at university.

“You can’t go on like this, Quinn,” Stark didn’t let go as Coraline tried to shrug him off. “You may have balls when it comes to psychopaths but you’re practically green and we haven’t even gotten to the dangerous bit yet.”

“I’m fi-” Coraline stopped herself mid protest, realising that the analytical mind eyeing her up and down would never fall for the kind of placations that had satisfied Steve. Instead she switched her answer. “I’ve got to do something useful. People could be trapped, or need medical attention or…”

She trailed off even as Tony spoke over her.

“You need medical attention.”

“So do you,” She fired back, before quietening as she saw Steve doubling back along the corridor out of the corner of her eye.

“You can have mine,” Tony said loudly while releasing her grip.

Steve’s confused expression mirrored Cora’s, but if anything this only encouraged Stark onwards.

“It’s an open channel between the higher clearance agents and all of us, should give you some pointers of where to go and what to avoid.”

“What?” Steve and Cora echoed each other.

Tony shushed them with a raised finger as with the other hand he produced an ear piece from his ear with a flourish.

“I’ll have Jarvis wire me back into the comms channel once I’m suited up. No need for two and I’m guessing you don’t have one.”

“A comms unit,” Cora said in understanding, while Steve objected: “Why would she need that, we’re not splitting up.”

There was a pause, ended only when Tony surreptitiously leant across and pinched Cora’s arm.

“Ow…I mean, I’m going to go help the other agents,” Cora fidgeted through the lie.

“What, where?” Steve sounded as incredulous as someone trying to be gentle could be.

“At the medical bay,” Cora’s reply was quiet, as if somehow volume would change how awful the lie was.  Behind her, Tony face palmed.

Steve looked Cora in the eye, and she used all her effort not to shy away from the eye contact.

“I just want to help people,” She all but whispered as a last ditch attempt to convince the soldier.

Steve sighed, bit his lip ever so slightly, and then returned his gaze to Cora’s with a concerned expression.

“You said when you get scared you don’t…uh…you don’t cope so well.”

“I’ll be fine.” Cora tried to put all her shaky confidence into that statement. She conceded at Steve’s continued worried expression. “I’ll be on the comms the whole time. Paranoia never hurts when there is actually a threat.”

Stark smiled at this, though Steve remained unconvinced.

Sighing, the historian used the next shiver of the ship’s spluttering engines to stride forward, grabbing Steve’s arm as she did so and putting some distance between them and Stark.

“It will be OK, Steve. You have more important things to worry about. This ship needs you –” Steve went as if to interject this, but Cora continued. “Stark’s ego needs to be quelled by someone and Fury still needs his ass whooped so until that can happen you have to help people where you can, and I’ll help people where I can. OK?”

“OK,” Steve responded with steel in his gaze.

Cora nodded in ascent as she let Steve go. The soldier lingered in front of her, but was cut off from his next intake of breath, his new point of argument, by Tony pushing in front of him and handing Cora the earpiece.

As if on cue, she could hear the crackling of voices; loud and alarmed tinged even in her palm. The two men in front of her paused as they heard it, Steve through his ear piece and Tony through the static of Cora’s. Both straightened at the barked commands and the ever so frantic tone, though Tony feigned nonchalance with a smile and the twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

“Duty calls.”

Steve looked at Cora steadily for a few seconds. Their eyes didn’t meet, instead his flicked up and down her body as she squinted in confusion. Of all the times to be checking her out?

“Hey, Medicine Woman,” Tony called back as he made his way presumably further towards the engine. It took a minute for Cora to get the reference – her pop culture knowledge was average at best, and that excluded times of life threatening danger, so by the time she did Tony was already nearing the turn with Steve in pursuit.

“Stay away from the engines. I need you alive so a historian can document how epically I save the day this time.”

 _Roger that_ , Coraline thought grimly as another groan of the ship sent her half jogging half stumbling in the opposite direction.

**aAa**

She ran into Coulson quite by accident. Of course she had run into a lot of people by accident. Her headache wasn’t improving and Stark clearly hadn’t had his moment of epic-ness yet because the ship was still tilting enough to throw the historian into walls on more than one occasion.

One of these tilting moments brought Cora into the arms of Coulson as he was rounding a bend and she was trying to figure out which way to take.

“Oof,” She managed as her body went sideways and her brain stubbornly refused to go with it.

“What are you doing on this level?” Coulson barked. The man who had smiled co-conspiratorially in the supply cupboard only days before was gone. This was the agent who dealt with the likes of Stark and Banner on a daily basis.

“The explosion,” Cora put a hand to her temples as she squinted through an explanation. “Stark and…and Captain Rogers went to fix the engine. I wanted to help too.”

She had been following Coulson – who had only stopped long enough to prop her back up on her own two feet before moving off again – but her final sentence had the agent spinning round and halting her progress.

“You want to help.” He said seriously.

“Uh…yeah?” Cora didn’t know why she suddenly felt her answer was wrong, but something in the agent’s eyes made her really wish she could reconsider her answer.

Coulson paused and stared at her. Not the kind of medical staring Dr. Banner had, or the worried staring of Steve. This was analytical, self-assured.

Coulson’s gaze snapped back to hers.

“Two floors down, near Dr. Banner’s lab, there is a supply room with a retinal scanner. Your iris scan will open it. Inside is your equipment. The area is in lockdown because of The Incident, but you have the clearance to get through. Do you understand?”

 _No!_ Cora monologued internally. _What in God’s name was this man talking about._

Outwardly though, she nodded. This was enough for Coulson, or perhaps the shouting in his ear - the same shouting Cora could hear from outside his headset even if it wasn’t transmitting to hers - got too loud to ignore.  

He reached the end of the corridor before her reply left her mouth.

“Agent Coulson,” she called. The agent fidgeted on the spot as he halted, clearly wanting, needing to be somewhere else and quickly.

“I…uh…I,” Cora couldn’t get her words to work. Standing in a corridor with the smell of charred plastic in the air and a man in a suit looking flustered in front of her she could only think about the corridor in her blessedly calm museum and the palm fronds that had originally hidden Agent Coulson from view.

“Save me an opening night ticket to your exhibition, Dr. Quinn,” Coulson managed a small smile at the historian as he broke her from her panic sliced thoughts. “And I want at least one piece of free Captain America merchandise from the gift shop, call it recompense for the damage to my nose.”

“Ha,” Cora’s laugh sounded so out of place amidst the chaos and charred airship, but it was comforting all the same. Coaxing a smile, the historian looked up to see if the agent matched it.

Coulson was already gone.

**aAa**

She couldn’t get to the supply room. 

Not for want of trying. She’d navigated the maze of corridors that made up the Helicarrier, even with the continual shuddering beneath her and churning around.

No the reason she couldn’t get to the supply room was because there was a man outside it. A man in full combat gear. A man with a gun. A man who was clearly talking into an earpiece that wasn’t on any of the frequencies Cora could pick up.

Coraline hadn’t done that much in the way of Special Ops history. It wasn’t really her area, or her interest. But she’d been in rooms with enough spy films playing to recognise the stereotype of ‘heavily armed tactical mercenary’. And even if that was blatant stereotyping mixed with a lack of real tactical knowledge, the uneasy feeling permeating in her gut was enough for her feet to cement to the floor and her brain to whirl.

There was no anecdote she could recollect, no past experience she could rely on to give her the answer she needed. She was alone; in a skirt that didn’t really allow for movement and heels which were teetering every step she took; and there was a man with a gun standing in front of the only room on this ship she had any direction to head towards.

“Oh…screw it!”

Cora skidded into the corridor, losing a shoe in the process as she tried to gain traction on the metallic floor surface.

“Help, you’ve got to help!” She exclaimed as she let the shakes of the floor take her down to her knees in front of the armed man. The tears that accompanied the shake in her voice were not entirely false, nor were the tremors of her hands as she looked up at the masked man in what she hoped was a picture of innocence.

“One of my friends, he…he got hit by something when the explosion…. He needs help and I can’t lift it off and …please…please help me!”

The man titled his head beneath his helmet, the scrutiny clear in his body language even if his expression was masked.

Cora took in another ragged breath, preparing for another round of make believe begging, but the sound of the man’s voice stopped her in her tracks.

“I’ve got a woman here. Administrative uniform. Requesting assistance. How should I proceed?”

“Please help,” Cora escalated her pleading as her eyes flickered with the unease that came with knowing she was being scrutinised from not just this man but by whoever was on the other end of his comm.  “There’s no one else on this level and my comm isn’t working and…and…”

The man moved his gun and Cora felt the words dry in her throat.

“Leave this area. You are not authorised,” Each of the man’s sentences was accompanied by a gesture with his gun.

“No, please. I know I’m not authorised but I need help and you’re here so…”

“Leave!”

Cora’s hands were in the air without her even realising it as she stared at the gun now pointed at her face.

“Ok, Ok,” She flinched away as the man once again gestured with the gun down the corridor. “I’m sorry, I’ll just go…”

 _Dammit,_ she thought as she took a step back in the direction she had come from. Trying to plead her way through or at least distract the guy long enough to somehow get into the room was the only half-baked plan that she had.

Suddenly the man was in front of her, and she was bouncing off the Kevlar of his body armour.

Cora reeled, and as she did had a second to notice that the man had  raised his visor and his eyes, tinged blue in a way that was just a bit too bright to not be unnerving, reflected a look of sceptical concern. That thought though, before it had had a chance to churn around her head, was dispelled by the raising of the man’s gun back to her temple.

“She is an Initiative member, confirm?”

 The voice of the man seemed more gravelly now, as if exposing even a shred of skin from beneath his armour had infused just a smidge of humanity into the robotic exterior.

Cora didn’t bother raising her hands this time. Staring at the man, at his pupils blown wide beneath the blue tinge, she realised two things in quick succession.

  1. This man couldn’t see her. Not really, and not in a way that pleading or crying or raising her hands in surrender would help. Which led her nicely into realisation number two.
  2. This man was going to kill her. And there wasn’t anything a historian in heels on some godforsaken flying motorway could do about it.



“Copy. Initiate 28061948 detained. Permission to neutralise?”

If there had been more time, perhaps Cora could have done something. True, her mind was coming up blank apart from an overwhelming claxon call to abandon ship, literally if necessary, if it meant getting out alive. But maybe she could have thought of something.

But there wasn’t more time.

There was a crackle of the man’s ear piece, which even Cora could hear, though perhaps adrenalin was helping with her hearing for that one.

There was a shuffle as he adjusted his aim. The click of the safety being turned off, something so cliché but all the more chilling when your mind is ever so helpfully telling you that this is it, the last thing you hear will be the cliché click of a safety trigger.

There was her own gasp, and the thudding inside her head that was overtaking the claxon, or maybe keeping beat with it.

And there was no time to ponder this, or any other thought.

_Because then there was the shot._

 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone ( and there are a lot more of you now, so thank you!). I’m really sorry for the long wait between chapters, there are a plethora of reasons for this, but the main one was because I have been terrified for months of posting this, because it is finally big reveal time and I am so scared you will think it lame or bad or stupid ( or all of the above, truly I am petrified about this). 
> 
> Nevertheless here it is, fingers crossed you like it, or at least are ambivalent. It’s been three years in the works so hopefully it gets the reception I had planned.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

There was pain. Pain across her shoulder blades and down her back. Pain in her head and pain as her ears wrung with the sound of the gun and of something else, something metallic and creaking that enveloped the space in the darkness that her closed eyes had created.

There was a thud. A dull, clinking thud as something hit her, and she felt the reverberations but no increase in the pain, no piercing, tunnelling jolt of a bullet in her gut, her chest, her brain. She didn’t yelp, didn’t think she could, but her lungs betrayed her and hitched in fear and confusion as she felt her heart continue to beat and the pain in her shoulders dull to an insistent but muted throb.

Coraline drew in a breath, waiting for the catch or the squelch or the feeling of air leaving from a different place. But her breathing felt normal, panicked but normal, and the resulting relief weakened her legs and dropped her to one knee. She jolted downwards, accompanied by the whirring of metal drawing back around her as the hallway light glare sought its way to the insides of her eyelids.

Slowly she opened her eyes.

Coraline had expected the lights. They were there when she entered the corridor, they were everywhere on this confounded ship, but the light that forced its way into her vision still caused the historian to grimace as her eyes were forced to squint.

Everything was so bright.

No, not bright. Clear. Clear in the way that new glasses were, back from when she had worn glasses before she had forked out for laser surgery in the summer after her first degree. Clear in the way that windows are clear after they have been washed, or in the way that a video becomes defined when viewed in better quality. The hallway, no, the world, was that clear.

Clear and bright and deafening.

She could hear the creaking of the ship still, but this was louder than it had been on her journey to the hallway. Where there had been a guttural moan she could feel in her feet, now it was reverberating somehow deeper in her eardrums and beating out a rhythm in its shifts and groans.

A jagged spasm in her temples pitched the historian forward as her hands tried to gain purchase on the slick hallway floor.

Cora’s arms shook as she breathed through the pain; as her eyes darted back and forth; as she tried to work out what was different, what was missing even when her head seemed so full of the information gained from the noise and light.

Her hold slipped again against the smoothness of the ship’s flooring as another spasm wracked through her. The force of it sent her head smacking down against the metal, the reverberations of which sent new waves of wringing through her head. On top of that though, if she focussed through the wringing and new spikes of pain, was a wet feeling.

Cora didn’t want to know what it was. In all honesty she didn’t want to know what anything was anymore. She wanted to curl up in a darkened room and close her eyes till everything was over, till whatever hell was being waged above and around her had come to a conclusion, any conclusion. But she really didn’t have that liberty, because the groan of the ship was now being accompanied by another groan, a groan that wasn’t hers. With the kind of trepidation that comes from already knowing what she was going to find, she raised herself from the floor and brought a hand to her face.

Blood.

A lot of it.

But not hers.

Coraline turned her hand over in inspection and watched the blood drip off her fingers. Her forehead scrunched in confusion as she tried to work out what was missing, what was causing her reaction to be apathetic rather than appalled.

It hit her at the same time as the ship sent another jolt through the floor. She could hear it screech and see the corridor tilting before righting itself, but despite the shift causing sparks to fly from the corridor bend in front of her, she couldn’t smell any smoke or the tell-tale scent of plastic melting.

Just like she couldn’t smell the blood.

She couldn’t smell, at all.

If this had been the only new development in Coraline’s life she would have panicked. But just as the thoughts started to rise to the tempo of her heartbeat, all thoughts of worry were surmised by the bigger jolt of fear that came with another groan across from her.

Cora looked up, properly this time, and squinted and blinked till she could focus this new, clearer eyesight to the shape coming into focus in front of her.

It was a man.

No, it was the man; the man with the too blue eyes who she had previously assumed would be the last person she would see.

He was on the floor, on his back, struggling to remove his helmet and groaning.

Coraline crossed to him instinctively, just as he managed to push the helmet from his head with another groan. She was aware that as she sank to her knees next to his head blood seeped into the fabric of her skirt, but it wasn’t like she could smell it so at least it didn’t turn her stomach.

Besides, all her thoughts were on him.

The wound was in his chest. It squelched as he heaved each breath inwards and Cora didn’t have to have more than a basic first aid qualification to know that it was more than a Band-Aid could fix.

The buttons on her shirt skittered along the floor as she rushed to shed it.

Pressure. The first aid course had said to apply pressure.

As the first of the pressure inflicted moans reached Cora’s eardrums, she spared a  grateful thought to the fact that what seemed like an age ago, she had accepted the complete S.H.I.E.L.D uniform guidelines that included a white short sleeved undershirt under the standard long sleeved blue blouse. That small action at least meant she wasn’t potentially saving someone’s life in her underwear.

“S…Stop,” The man’s moans turned to a grunt as his hands cemented to her arms in a way Cora was sure would leave bruises.

“Ah,” The pain made Coraline look up, and then down again to meet his gaze. There was pain in his eyes too. Much, much worse than was in hers.

“I can’t,” She couldn’t help the shake in her voice. In truth she wanted to cry, but that wouldn’t help anything so instead she had to settle for biting the inside of her cheek “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have to apply pressure…just gotta apply pressure…”

Underneath her touch, the man shuddered as he took another breath turned groan, but then the grip on her arms was back to full force and he was choking words out quicker than she could identify them from the groans that accompanied them.

“Don’t…stop…there’s no use…you got me good…never should have trusted that horned jerk…up against comic heroes and godforsaken flying…”

“Stop talking,” Cora had meant for authoritative but her brain instead went for pleading. “Please you’ll only make it worse and you are going to be fine so you’re not even making sense but that’s ok because you’re hurt and-”

The man groaned again. Cora’s voice raised an octave.

“Oh no, please don’t do that. It’s ok, I took a first aid class. I can do this. I can help.”

The historian took a deep breath in, and then let it out in a series of stuttered sobs.

She had read about this kind of thing; of soldiers knowing they were injured too badly to wait till a medic could cross No Man’s Land to reach them; of last gasping breaths and wishes for messages passed along. Oh God. If this man started telling her a message…

Cora couldn’t even fathom what she would do then.

The sound of choking brought her out of her horror induced haze.

She still couldn’t smell it, but having to watch the man attempt to breath around the blood in his throat still made her gag.

Again the man gripped her arms. Cora had all but forgotten he was still holding on, so weak had his grip gotten, but with the last of the hacking coughs it was back to full force. The pressure alleviated slightly as the man grappled for her hand.

“Please,” He whispered. “I…I can’t do this alone…I don’t…it’s dark.”

Cora bit her lip as she looked from the man’s expression and the wound on his chest.

Slowly, she removed her hand from his chest. The shirt stayed. It stuck. Cora tried not to think about it as she shuffled closer to the man’s head.

“What’s your name?” She asked quietly as she repositioned to be able to take his hand in hers.

“Joe, Joe Caplan.”

“Hello Joe,” Cora used the hand not being clutched to bundle the bottom of her undershirt and dab at the dribble of blood beginning to run down the man’s chin. “My name is Cora. How old are you?”

“32. I can’t die at 32, oh Jesus I can’t die, I can’t...”

“Shh, it’s okay, Joe. You’re going to be just fine. You know how I know?”

Joe coughed again before he replied, weakly. “How?”

“Because I’m British,” Cora managed a small smile as she met his gaze. “We like to think we’re the authority on everything. And right here, right now, I am telling you that you are going to be absolutely fine. So don’t worry, okay?”

“That creep, with the staff, he…he was British.”

_Loki._

“No, no he isn’t British. Far too impatient and unspeakably rude. Besides, he is not here.” Cora glanced at Joe’s wound and looked away before he would see the acceptance in her gaze.

“It’s just you and me, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You are safe, Joe.”

Cora hadn’t realised when she had started crying again, and for a split second she was worried the man on the floor in front of her would notice, would realise something was wrong, or would suddenly get up and shoot her as he had been planning to do just minutes before.

But Joe didn’t get up. Instead he whispered:

“I’m scared, Cora.”

“There is nothing to be scared of Joe. Everything is ok.”

The lie was bitter in her mouth, but it didn’t matter because as soon as she had said it Joe was inhaling rapidly and gurgling as blood swilled in his throat.

And then there was no more time for words or jokes or poorly spoken lies, because Cora could do nothing more than brush the gunman’s hair from his clammy forehead and shush him between sobs.

It took two minutes.

Cora didn’t cry when it was over. Her tears were spent, her eyes dry and stinging. Instead she sat and settled for gasping instead of breathing, all the while trying fruitlessly to piece together thoughts in the empty nothingness her mind had reverted to.

The comm transmission interrupted the silent whiteness of her mind. It wasn’t a message; rather a short staccato beep followed by a tinny explosion somewhere else on board. Cora didn’t even flinch.

She did however hit the floor as the ship tilted horizontally to the right, and then almost immediately to the left.

The world had gone hazy again as she blinked open her eyes. Her hearing was fine, so she could hear the comm static give way to Fury’s open question:

“It’s Barton. He took out our systems. He's headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?”

Cora didn’t know who Barton was, or if she did she couldn’t remember. She didn’t respond to the message, instead opting to slowly shift to a position she could get herself up from.

Blinking again as she propped one arm under her, she met Joe’s lifeless gaze.

It wasn’t quite a whimper or a shriek. It was an inhuman meld of the two which accompanied Cora’s backwards scuttle.

Her hands were wet and slightly sticky. Her side was wet. Her hair was wet.

She didn’t want to look down, didn’t know if she could cling to her remaining sanity if she did, but another small tilt of the Helicarrier had her skidding into a wall and forced her to look at her hands.

She shrieked again.

It was blood. Of course it was blood. Joe’s blood that had pooled out under him and that she had fallen into when the ship had shifted.

There was nothing to wipe it on, no soft surface or handy paper towels. Just the steel of the Helicarrier corridor and those stupid, incessant lights giving her a clear view of the mess in front of her.

A crackling noise from in front of her stopped the keening whine of fear in her throat.

A comm was crackling.

Oh God, Joe’ s comm was crackling.

She didn’t want to go over to him. Didn’t want to know what it was saying. Didn’t even really care if it was a threat to her any more. She just wanted to be clean and dry and somewhere safe. Not here. Not now. Not crossing back to the man she had just watched die and gingerly extracting an earpiece from his ear.

As she clutched the retrieved earpiece, Cora felt as if the last of her humanity was draining from her. She had just stolen an earpiece from a dead man. She wanted to care about this, but in the absence of shrieking, there was only a void.

“Caplan, do you copy,” the receiver crackled.

“Caplan, once the Initiate is neutralised, proceed to Engine 3 and neutralise the Initiate member assisting Tony Stark in the engine repairs.”

Cora felt her stomach drop. _Steve._

“Repeat, Caplan do you copy? Is Initiate 28061948 neutralised?”

Cora hoped the earpiece acted as a mic. She wanted whoever was giving the orders to hear the anger in her tone, and all the fear and panic that Joe had felt and made her feel along with it it.

“Negative. I’m alive. Come and get me.”  


**aAa**

 

Cora hadn’t waited for the next batch of blue eyed mercenaries to find her. Instead she had turned tail, forgetting the mystery locked behind the cupboard door as she sprinted back towards the engines.

She had to get there before they did. She just had to.

The hallways were empty as she ran. That was probably for the best. The mercenaries would shoot on sight, but S.H.I.E.L.D agents would likely stop a bloodied woman with tear stained cheeks and by this point no shoes. If they stopped her they would be in the firing line as the blue eyed gang inevitably caught up. And that would mean casualties.

That would mean more deaths because of her.

Cora vowed not in words but in actions as she pelted down corridors and up the steep flights of stairs.

_That would not happen._

She had stopped only once, a pause necessitated by her personal blend of pragmatism and paranoia. Her hearing was still pin drop sharp, and this enhanced auditory input had forced a skidded stop into a lower level gym changing room when she couldn’t work out whether she was hearing footsteps just behind her or just the sound of her heart in her ears.

The slammed door of the changing room had allowed her ears to refocus and convince her brain that her blue eyed pursuers were further than she had thought. The pair of track pants abandoned on the changing bench allowed Cora to finally shed the last part of her S.H.I.E.L.D uniform as she traded the restrictive pencil skirt for slightly too big grey trousers.

That stop had been minutes ago, but when minutes meant everything it felt like an age.

An age away from the engine she could hear humming to her left, and from the man in ridiculous red and blue that she wanted more than anything to revel in the steady presence of.

**aAa**

 

Cora hadn’t made it to Steve before the mercenaries had. Not that they had caused the super soldier much of a hindrance till that point. As much as he hated to admit it, the barrage of gunfire and feeling of certain danger that settled in his stomach was a pleasant familiarity to Steve. It was something he knew. Something that no amount of decades lost could change his response to.

An element of his situation that was less pleasant was the increased tilting of the ship as presumably, something else went wrong elsewhere on board.

“Stark, we're losing altitude,” The comm from Fury had crackled and answer to his question as soon as he had thought it.

Steve could do nothing for the metal man inside the engine, aside from waiting for instructions to meddle with the box of wires and lights he would barely be able to comprehend in normal situations, let alone right now.

Plus his attention was again diverted to the newest S.W.A.T gear clad imposter taking aim from below him.

Cora also couldn’t help with Stark’s engine repairs, but as she rounded the final corner and saw another merc take aim at the blonde haired blue eyed, patriotic beacon on the platform above, she found she really could do something about that.

Steve took aim as he watched the gunman do the same, but his clear shot was marred quite suddenly by a grey and white blur skidding from the depths of the Helicarrier and jumping the gunman from behind.

“Cora?” Steve’s exclamation was first one of shock because what was she doing here when she had promised to be far from this particular danger zone. However that shock changed to alarm, pure and ice cold in his chest, as he watched the woman teeter closer and closer to the edge as she wrestled for control.

Cora was aware of her precarious position, but it was a background thought. All her efforts were taken up by squeezing and squeezing her arm around the windpipe of the man in front of her. She couldn’t get his helmet off, and had no hope of subduing him with it still on through the traditional concussion and a quick nap way of combat, so instead she was strangling the way she remembered they did in the movies.

And it was actually working.

The man was just becoming limp in her grip, and Cora was just about to lay him down to one side and hope he wasn’t faking it, when she heard Steve’s shout.

The alarm made her look up. His stricken face as their eyes met made her freeze, unable to look away. And the sound of gunfire behind them as another mercenary rounded the bend made the historian lose her grip.

The man in front of her pitched forward.

Steve heard Cora scream, an animalist mixture of ‘No!’ and something guttural and desperate that he never wanted to hear from her again. He spared a moment to watch her expression crumple as the mercenary was swept off the side of the ship, before his focus was back on aiming and firing at the gunman behind the historian.

The man went down.

Cora backed away from the edge and stood up.

Steve was already making his way towards her, following his feet rather than his head as he abandoned the fuse box he had been ordered not to leave.

Stark crackled over the comm, giving Steve the cue for the lever, his voice strained.

Cora looked up and met Steve’s gaze again, but her eyes were glassy, her face tear stained but calm.

“I’m going to help,” her words were lost to the wind.

Steve watched, and then yelled, as Dr Coraline Quinn took two steps forward and let herself fall.

**aAa**

There was pain. Pain as the air stung her cheeks and evaporated the tears drawn from her eyes as soon as they appeared. Pain as her joints locked into place in a way that made Cora want to struggle but be unable to. Pain in her brain as schematics flashed and memoires flashed in and out of focus.

Her eyesight focussed in on the man falling below her. Her was unconscious, a flipping and tilting target that she locked onto as she followed him.

Her arms didn’t stretch out, somehow her body knowing even if her mind didn’t that she would be more streamlined with them bracketed to her sides.

Nor was she screaming, however much she wanted to as she watched the slither of land below her get incrementally larger.

Instead she was gaining on the mercenary she had promised herself would not die today, and trying not to think about what exactly she would do once she caught up with him.

She could not have predicted the answer, even if her body seemed to know exactly how to react.

Arms stretched out in as close to a bear hug from behind that could be accomplished in mid-air as she became level with the man.

Shoulders led the rest of her body in a twist as she continued downwards, spinning the unconscious man with her.

Her brain, the last part of her body to disobey her direct commands, listened to her shoulder blades insisting on the need to resolve an itch like no other and issued the command to stretch.

There was the creaking, clicking snap of something obeying the command and changing her downward trajectory in a wind battering whiplash of upwards motion as Cora watched from inside her own skin as her view of the ground was replaced by clouds and sky and with another sideways tilt, the view of the Helicarrier smoking above her.

And then there was a mantra inside her mind, calling and calling to her: _Up, up, up._

**aAa**

Stark had taken the long way out of the engine, if the long way could be counted as being chewed up by the now functioning engine blades and spat out to rest, quite fortuitously, on top of a subdued gunman  acting as his landing pad.  

Judging by the damage JARVIS was reporting for the suit, a time to call it quits could not have come sooner. Tony was, in fact, quite content to take his leave right there on his back. There was plenty of room amidst the charred ruins of the engine’s inner workings to breathe through the pain and simultaneously curse the spangly idiot above him who couldn’t even follow the one command to pull a lever on time.

Said spangly idiot, however, seemed to have other plans.

“Stark, get up. Stark!”

The Captain’s tone made Stark look up, and the tears making streaks down the super soldier’s face garnered his full attention.

“Cora,” Steve could barely get the words out, his mouth dry, his heart in his throat not letting any words get through. “She went…”

He wheezed.

Stark sat up, followed Steve’s line of sight, and swore.

“JARVIS, how far can I get?” His tone was steely, determined.

“The damage to the suit prevents any continued aerial action, Sir.”

“Not good enough, make it happen.”

“Sir, the power capacity of the suit is unable to support you, let alone that combined with another individual.”

“No,” Stark uttered.

“No,” Steve echoed.

“Arghh” a man yelled as he followed Stark’s arc into the Helicarrier corridor.

Both men looked up, watched the man land in a heap just in front of them, and then scrambled to their feet.

They heard it before they saw it.

A whooshing, flapping movement of air moving through slithers of empty space.

A metallic beating against the smoke and air currents forcing wind into the corridor and around both men.

The small thud of bare feet connecting with the metal of the corridor edge, followed by the scraping of metal against metal as Coraline landed.

Her hair was undone from its braided bun, whipping around her shoulders as beneath it pupils were blown wide in fear and confusion.

Her hands were in fists as she took in visibly jagged breaths, but her stance remained stiff, balanced despite the position that had already proven precarious.

Cora tried to meet Tony’s eyes, and then drew her gaze to Steve’s. They both looked past her, to the metal shaped in intricate detail, fanning in an arc behind her shoulders and upwards till they began to crumple against the debris and broken walkways of the ship.

As Cora looked at Stark and her super soldier, they looked beyond her. They looked at the wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There have been Easter eggs and small clues to this from the beginning, and the schematics will be revealed next chapter, hopefully in the not too distant future. But for now, any thoughts, comments, complaints or questions. You know the drill.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everybody. Sorry again for the long wait between chapters. Updates are not going to be regular while real life still gets in the way, but I am so grateful for all of you that put up with my terrible schedule and continue to read, review, and make my day with every mailbox notification.   
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

There was a moment of blessed calm as Cora’s feet touched the metal. The wind seemed to have settled, the whir of the engines was muted in her ears; all she could feel was the cool metal underneath her toes, and the stares of the two men in front of her as she shrugged her shoulders in what was probably a comically large motion and listened as the wings retracted.

She didn’t remember everything, and what she did was jumbled and fragmented, but she knew to listen for the clicks and grinds as each part of the mechanism folded into itself, back and back and back till all that was left were the two buttons on the shoulder blades under her shirt.

 _The buttons she had never noticed_.

No, she chided herself as she took a tentative step forward. Don’t think about that now. Now all you need to do is focus on making sure everyone is ok, starting with yourself.

With the final click under her shirt, the pain started.

Not the physical pain, though Cora could feel it welling up behind the numbness she was enforcing to keep a grasp of the small amount of sanity she had left. No, this pain was raw and deep and wrenching in her chest as she looked up at Captain Steve Rogers and didn’t know quite who she saw.

It still looked like Steve. A pallid faced, glistening eyed, gaping Steve not too different from the man she had met in the meeting room just over a month ago.

 _But he might not be,_ her mind supplied. _Because he might have known._

In all the noise and chaos of it all, the thought hadn’t held its position at the forefront of her brain after she had rushed from the lab with it clouding her sight. But now, standing with the wind blowing her hair around her as her eyes met those of the super soldier, that same thought filled her stomach with lead.

She hadn’t felt comfortable since that day in the museum, but she had felt safe with Steve. At least she had felt safe with the old Steve who had shared museum trip inside jokes and acted as a sole compatriot in petty acts of defiance against the eagle-badged organisation holding both their puppet strings.

This new Steve though, the man taking control and wearing his uniform with the assuredness of someone comfortable in his role, he did not look like a person still being having his strings jerked. This could mean he was just now opting out of the S.H.I.E.L.D issue narrative, just as Coraline was planning to do as long as she could be sure her legs would support her in doing so.

  _Or it could mean that he has known all along, about you and about what S.H.I.E.L.D did and what they are planning to do next._

And if he knew what they did, if he is just another part of the deception playing out in S.H.I.E.L.D’s script, then they may be pulling the strings but he is retying the knots as they unravel at her wrists.

The ship groaned, and Cora wanted to groan with it, or sob or scream or scatter. So when the floor tilted under her again, Coraline followed its lead, forward and forwards as she contemplated letting the pain through the barriers in her brain if only to get those thoughts to stop and her position in S.H.I.E.L.D’s web to seem a bit less tangled.

Cora was already bracing for impact as she was caught by the shoulders and pressed tightly to a smoke scented chest. She titled her head sideways, not to see who was holding her - because it was Steve, it was always Steve - but instead to look beyond him, to the man she had momentarily forgotten, crumpled on the walkway after she’d plucked him from the sky.

“Is he alright?”

The man on the walkway groaned in response

Coraline sagged in relief. Steve, misinterpreting the sudden relax of muscles, cradled the woman closer to his chest with a half cry, half gasp. That made the historian stiffen again.

Steve felt it, because he manoeuvred the smaller woman out to arms reach where he could scan over her with at least a little of the wartime calmness he’d had but was now clinging to.

“Cora,” He managed at a whisper as he noticed the blood and the tense posture and the blaringly obvious realness of a woman he had watched fall out of his reach.

Cora shifted in his grip, and when that did nothing to move Steve’s hands from her shoulders, she felt for the barely there memories hidden behind her eyes and twisted her body sideways, her arms coming up to clench around Steve’s forearms as another twist placed the historian close against the soldier, his arms trapped against his chest.

Even with whatever range of movement the time she had forgotten had granted her, Cora knew it was Steve’s shock mixed with her own element of surprise that made the manoeuvre work. Not that that mattered. As long as Steve could feel the power in her grip and see the seriousness of her expression, how they got to that position was inconsequential.

Cora was sure that for normal people she would be leaving bruises. Her arms were straining as she kept the Captain in her grasp, managing to keep him still despite confused struggling.  It was only when she pressed harder still and felt her knuckles twinge that she watched Steve’s mouth form a small ‘oh’ of pain and he really looked at her.

That look nearly killed her. It was a look of shock, and confusion and of the realisation that she wasn’t who he had thought.

 _I’m not who I thought I was either,_ her mind was resentful.

“Did you know what they did to me?” She asked coolly.

“Cora – I –”

“Captain Rogers, please. Answer the question.”

She flinched internally at that, but equally knowing that if reverting back to formalities again stung him as much as it hurt her to do, then he would answer her question.

“No, of course I didn’t. Cora…Coraline I would never…”

It sounded like Steve. But God she wanted it to, and maybe that was clouding her judgement, swaying the sanity she was clinging to to accept some lower modicum of trust if only to feel safe again, to feel grounded amidst the chaos.

“Mr Stark,” She spoke to the man getting clunkily to his feet without averting her gaze or releasing her hold of the super soldier. “Was there evidence on the files you hacked that Captain Rogers was aware of S.H.I.E.L.D’s actions?”

Steve spluttered in indignation, but Stark’s response was all that Cora was focussed on.

“Not that I saw.”

“OK,” She met Steve’s gaze once again, forcing him to stop and breathe and really look at her. 

He could see the tears threatening to spill in her eyes. With a start, he realised he could feel them in his own as he blinked away the engine smoke still trailing around them both.

“Tell me again you didn’t know what they did to me,” A pause, and then quietly, with a sob that had his heart twisting in ways he hadn’t felt in a long time: “Please.”

“Cora,” He breathed out while fighting back his own feelings. Bloody and tearful and trembling as she stood there, he could think of a thousand words to say but none that could convince her he hadn’t known. None that he hadn’t already stuttered aghast at the idea. None that had worked yet to keep her trust.

 “Oh Steve, I really, really want to believe you.”

As she stepped back, Steve’s hands followed, not ready to let her go yet; not when he had barely gotten to convince himself she wasn’t still falling from the ship to where his hands couldn’t catch her.

Cora flinched back from Steve’s outstretched grasp, and this action snapped back into focus the feel of someone close to her; threatening, blocking, and then later spluttering, clutching, gagging.

She stumbled as the memory flashed across her eyes. Oh God. She had watched someone…but the noise…the ricochet...Oh God, had she..?

“Agh” She choked. The memories, the implications of the memories, and the feel of a stitch in her side threatened to bring her to her knees.

This was accompanied by a sound of rushing in her ears that swept her back to memories of swimming lessons when she was 7 and spent most of the class under the water listening to the muffled chatter above her and the bubbly whoosh of splashes and strokes around.

And all that combined had Coraline reach for the wall for support, and miss it because her vision had gone black.

 _Oh, am I-_ She thought, but then she was gone.

Steve hadn’t been quick enough to catch her.

 _Again,_ his brain taunted as he rushed to her side.

Stark’s eyes darted between the soldier and the civilian, trying and failing to come up with a decent idea, a plan, a fix. As the soldier fussed in front of him though, and the woman he’d barely met remained crumpled and limp, his brain provided nothing, still stuck on what he had just seen; on wings and women and the defiance of gravity.

It was JARVIS that prompted action. Its voice was slightly wobbly; clearly the processing had taken a hit when Stark had been through the metaphorical washer.

“Sir, Dr Quinn is currently symptomatic within the parameters of hypoglycaemic shock.”

Stark looked again at the historian, who was now being cradled by Rogers as he shook her first gently and then with more force. In another situation, Stark would have rolled his eyes at the man’s complete lack of first aid knowledge (He had served in a war for God’s sake) but in this case:

“Is she diabetic?” Stark questioned JARVIS as he clunked his way towards the pair. His suit was dead, even if the operating system was clinging on, and it was making every step a struggle.

“Her records do not indicate so.”

“Have they done something to her?”

“If you are referring to the biotechnical enhancements, they would not anatomically be responsible for a blood sugar decrease of this level. However the physical strain of sustained flight would account for the hypoglycaemic state, posturizing that Dr Quinn would not have known to eat according to her physical needs.”

“Cora!” Steve’s voice cut over JARVIS’ analytics. “Cora, wake up!”

Tony looked up at the shout to see Steve skidding backwards, panic clear in his expression as the woman in front of him convulsed. The inventor swore under his breath before giving the orders.

“JARVIS, call a medic. Rogers, get her onto her side.”

**aAa**

“Coraline, wake up poppet. Just open your eyes for me sweetie, I’m right here.”

That was her Mum, which would have been weird even without the pet names and concerned tone, because it was a Tuesday morning and Coraline was meant to be in a science lesson.

The fourteen year old blinked in confusion and tried to sit up before she’d even really registered she had been lying down.

“Where am I?” She asked softly before coughing. God her throat was dry.

Her mother was perched on the edge of the bed, and took her hand as the teen shuffled upright.

“You’re in the hospital, sweetie.”

“What? How? Why?”

Her mother hushed her.

“You fainted in class, darling. Why didn’t you tell me you felt ill in the morning? I would have kept you home if I’d known you were brewing such a fever.”

Cora went back through her morning in her head. She hadn’t felt ill. Tired, of course, and really not looking forward to fifth period maths, but not ill. She would definitely of milked it if she’d felt ill.

“I wasn’t ill this morning, Mum. I felt fine, I still feel fine.”

For the first time, Cora actually looked around. She had done her best to avoid hospitals since waking up in one after the explosion, and so the drab but clinically clean room was as familiar as distant memories tend to be. Wires snaked off the bed to various pieces of equipment though she must have been on some pretty strong drugs because she couldn’t feel the pinch of the needle in her hand or the cold of the heart sensors on her chest. Nevertheless they were there, and when coupled with the wilting flowers on the side cabinet and the true, deep set concern on her mother’s face, it made Cora’s heart speed up and her mind begin to whizz.

“Woah there, who threw a rave in here and didn’t invite me?”

 A doctor rushed in at the sound of the monitors, though of course practice and many an emergency on the children’s ward made his tone that of mock insult rather than any distinguishable sense of panic.

“Just lie back for me please Coraline,” He pushed the teen back downwards as he glanced at the heart monitor. Cora struggled beneath him as her eyes roved.

Her mother was there again, on her other side to make room for the doctor to fiddle with cables and check the beeping screen.

“It’s alright poppet, calm down. You’re ok.”

“What’s happening, Mum?” Cora whimpered.

Cora always knew what was happening. Following the explosion, and the amount of time she had lost to operations and under anaesthesia for hospital stays, it had become her paranoid prerogative to always know what was happening and when. It was why history was so enticing, and why she was so utterly and completely freaked out by the dying flowers on the sideboard and the tiredness in her mother’s eyes.

She had lost time again, and she didn’t know why. _Or how much._

“You’ve been very poorly, and it has taken some time for the hospital to make you better.”

Her mother was talking to her like she was a child. And she was, and certainly felt like one right about now, but simplifying whatever experience it was that she couldn’t remember wasn’t helping Cora feel calm. Not in the slightest.

“Coraline, you have been in a medically induced coma for three weeks,” The doctor was talking to her more like an adult, which made her stop and breath if only to listen to what he had to say. “Your temperature was at a dangerous level when you were admitted and to keep your organs functioning and your brain from frying we had to keep you still and cool till we could work out what was wrong.”

“What…how…did you find out? Did you fix it?”

Her mother and the doctor shared a look. Cora didn’t like the look. It reminded her of after the explosion, when she had asked where her legs had gone and her parents had shared a similar before explaining they were numb from the operation to pin one of them back into shape.

“You are no longer in any danger,” The doctor replied, as her mother chimed in, “Everything is fine now, sweetie.”

Cora wasn’t convinced, and clearly didn’t look it because her mother continued.

“They don’t know exactly what caused it, darling, but it might have been something from The Operation, so they’ve called the special doctors that did it to come and run some scans, just to make sure.”

The operation from when she was eight? How could anything only just have come up from that now, six years along the line?

“When can I go home?” Cora asked instead.

“Soon, poppet,” Her mother stroked her hair as she made the empty promise. “Soon.”

**aAa**

Cora awoke again, not in a hospital and no longer 14 .

Not that she knew where she was, or what she was, or even who, because her eyes opened to the sight of someone in blue above her amidst a haze of darkened smoke.

She flinched before she had even properly gained feeling in her limbs. The person above her flinched too, and their movement revealed a light strip on the ceiling and the grey walls of a part of the ship that certainly wasn’t the engine.

Cora sat up, her breathing quickening.

She wasn’t at the engine any more. _She was somewhere else._

 _Again_ ,  supplied the voice in her head.

Cora paused in her eye roving, her breath shuddering, her hand shaking.

Again? What did her mind mean again?

Slowly, Coraline looked around again. The walls were still grey, the ceiling light still bearing down on her. The window looking out into the corridor still devoid of friendly faces. The person now on the other side of the room still blurry and blue toned.

The pressure of something getting smushed behind her shoulder blades though, that was new.

Her range of motion wasn’t great, but she craned her head enough to see the wings, in all their metal feathered glory.

And just like that she remembered why the situation was so familiar.

There had been a room, a lot like this in its uniformity and greyscale aesthetics. There had been a bed and a doctor and a nurse who looked both cautious and curious at once. There had been the disorientation and the fear and the longing for a familiar face, of one familiar face in particular with blue eyes and a kind smile. And there had been the wings, and the instructions on how to use them, and then at the end of the week, an injection given without warning that had made the time malleable beneath someone else’s palm.

Coraline took another shuddering breath in.

Her vision had cleared to the point where she could see it was Steve across the room, but the expression on his face made her question whether her vision really was back to normal.

Captain Rogers looked scared. He looked scared of her.

Cora’s heartbeat started to flutter as her mind tried and failed to piece together her situation and the resulting expression on his face.

_Cannot find link. Does not compute._

In one motion, Coraline shifted to the edge of the bed and brushed her toes against the floor.

Another glance at Steve. The same expression in return.

Cora bit her lip and stood.

The first step was shaky, her legs panging with a residual cramp. But she was standing, more or less without any swaying, and Steve’s expression had changed ever so slightly, from fear to worry.

Another step.

Then the acknowledgment that she felt for want of a better word, gunky. Cora hadn’t pulled many all-nighters at university, but of the few she had this felt like the worst of the mornings after. Her brain was tired, her body ached, her stomach flip-flopped as she tiptoed further forwards.

And her back twinged specifically as she reached the limit of her wingspan and they caught on the frame of the door leading to what she presumed was a bathroom.

The resulting tangle as she tried and failed to force the unruly appendages back through the door forced Cora to look at her wings. Actually look at them.

First things first, they didn’t look real. That was obvious, and even more so for the historian who was running on rationality and logic to keep her mind sound. Denial had coped fine with a super-secret government agency, had gotten over the hurdle of a flying spaceship, was still processing being in a firefight but was nearing 100% completion. All could be happily explained away under a net of complete deniability.

But wings.

Something told her that wasn’t going to happen.

Every action felt foreign. More foreign then crutches. More foreign then having to learn to walk again on limbs that had forgotten how to be legs. More foreign than flying, because at least with that it had been muscle memory and actions she half remembered learning not three weeks previously.

Having _them_ attached to her back though, that was the feeling of a coat pocket caught on a door handle, of headphones catching in fleece zippers, of something half you and half foreign not responding to your movements and yanking muscle as it did so.

Cora growled in frustration as she remained stuck, her extra body parts ( if she could stomach thinking of them as that) stubbornly remaining hitched to the door frame while the rest of her remained rigid in the middle of the room.

A hand on her elbow made her whirl as much as her position allowed her, her fist already swinging.

Steve caught it with ease, elbow raised as she looked up at him.

“You’ve already gotten me once today, twice would just be mean.”

Steve was being…funny?

Cora blinked once. Twice. Considered the terrible attempt at humour of the man holding her wrist still in its swinging position. Blinked again.

And then half laughed half sobbed as she folded into him.

Steve did catch her this time, not that she had far to fall.

“I’ve got you,” He whispered above her head.

The moment lasted a minute at the most, because after that Cora shuffled in his arms and the reminder of how she’d gotten there became even clearer.

“Ow,” She said quietly as she twisted again to try and dislodge the wings.

“Do you,” Steve faulted as his mind tried and failed again to connect the woman he knew and the metal protruding from her shoulders which he certainly didn’t. “Do you want some help?”

Cora flushed as she nodded. It felt strange to be embarrassed about this, but she felt it all the same. Someone seeing her so vulnerable made he want to curl into herself and fade away. The feeling doubled when that person was Steve.

With one more failed shove, Cora acquiesced with a sigh.

“Please.”

“Right,” Steve dropped her wrist as he walked around her. His fingers lightly brushed the wing joint at its arc. Cora couldn’t feel it so she craned her neck to watch his ministrations as he felt along the top ridge of the wing.

With another inward sigh Cora added learning the basics of avian biology to her list of things to do.

“Can you…um…can you move them outwards?”

Steve’s voice jolted her back to the present. In a motion that felt practically comedic, she brought her shoulder up and rolled it.

Nothing happened.

Cora bit her lip in frustration.

“I don’t know how,” And then, muttered, “They only taught the bit that was useful to them.”

Steve appeared back in her line of vision, his eyes wide.

“You remember?”

Cora nodded before running a hand through her hair, crusty as it still was with dried blood.

“Bits. Everything is foggy, but I remembered some when I…jumped. And a bit more when I woke up.”

Steve processed this for a minute, but on seeing the underlying fear on Coraline’s stressed features, he dropped any further questions.

Moving back to the arc of the wing most wedged into the doorframe, he felt along the top of what he presumed would be a bone in birds till he felt a small button.

“Ready?” He held the downward curve of the wing in one hand as the other prepared to press down.

“Uh…Yeah...I mean..”

Steve hit the switch, and the wing creased at a right angle. It didn’t look natural any more. At the engine’s edge it had seemed real: the feathers glistening but still realistic in their intricacy, the motions of landing and folding inwards definitely not far removed from the birds he had watched from his window all those years ago. Now though, as he moved to deconstruct the other wing in a similar manner, they looked more like costume pieces, wired together by a complex system of pulleys and levers yes, but a costume all the same.

Cora shifted on her feet as she felt the weight redistribute. Shad had given up craning her neck once Steve had moved on to the second wing, but having him behind her, fixing something about her she couldn’t find a solution for, still felt intimate even without being able to watch.

“Almost got it,” Steve muttered, before there was another clunk and Cora pitched forward as the weight centred on her shoulder blades.

Her leg jarred as she stepped forward as a counterweight, but that small pain was inconsequential compared to what she had felt, both at the engine and in the weeks she had forgotten. So instead of flinching, Cora shrugged her shoulders, focussed on her breathing, and let the wings retract.

Steve watched as they did, eyes wide.

He had seen a lot of things that had shocked him in the past 72 hours – far more than his ten dollar wager had accounted for.

The emotion he was feeling wasn’t quite shock. Even if he would never tell Cora, he couldn’t deny that a small part of it was revulsion. Not at her, God, never at her, but at what they had done to her, what they had made her be.

The feathers appeared to be attached to a central wire, with each one rolling into the central tube before that pushed back into the main ‘bone’ of the wing. Once each feathered tendril had done that, the wing bone itself retracted inwards till it disappeared under the tatters of Coraline’s shirt.

Both occupants of the room heard the click as the wings retreated into the button fused to her shoulder blades. Both of them flinched, one in a niggling pain, one in a wave of sympathy.

“Okay,” Coraline turned stiffly, her eyes apprehensive. “Please tell me that didn’t look as weird as it felt.”

Steve gaped.

“Oh God it did, didn’t it,” Cora covered her eyes with her hands with another laughter-sob.

Steve didn’t go to her this time. He just waited as the historian shook for a few moments, before she straightened again, her gaze steely.

“How long have I been here?”

Good, Steve thought, these are questions I can answer. These are mission briefs and tactical inquiries and battle plans being put into motion.

“ About three hours. You were brought here just after Stark repaired the engine.”

Cora didn’t remember that. Steve did, but didn’t want to relive it. Carrying someone he thought had lost in his arms, apparently close to losing her again, and then having no choice but to hand her over to medics probably not  dissimilar to the ones that had done what they had to her – that was not a set of emotions he was ready to re-experience.

“They gave me something,” she stated. She didn’t really need the confirmation. She could feel the needle mark through the too big track pants she was still wearing.

“Yes, they said you could die without it. Something with sugar.” Steve reached for the table in the far corner of the room. “I wrote it down…”

Cora waved him off.

“It was probably glucagon. I had a diabetic roommate for a while, I can’t imagine I suddenly stopped regulating insulin so if it was sugar related it was probably that. And if it wasn’t, well I’d rather just live in denial that it was.”

She managed a small smile at that, though the twitch at the edges betrayed how close to breaking she really was.

“What about everyone else? Did everyone…make it.”

Steve noticed the voice crack, and even though he hadn’t been briefed on every aspect of the attack yet, from the blood still dried to her clothes and what he had caught of her mumbles before she had collapsed he could tell there was more to Cora’s question than a general enquiry.

“There have been casualties.” He watched her sag at that. “Romanoff got beaten up pretty good, but held her own against Barton so they’re both walking that off now. Thor’s gone, the cage activated with him in after Loki escaped. Banner fell –”

He stopped at Cora’s gasp.

“Dr Banner fell off the carrier?” She all but squeaked. “Oh God, I could have, I should have…”

“You couldn’t have saved him Cora,” Steve interjected as he watched the tears spill over onto her cheeks.

“I could have,” Her voice was high and filled with anger. “They made me to help, and he needed it and I didn’t help him.”

“You didn’t know, and besides, Banner wasn’t himself when he fell. It would have been more dangerous for everyone if he had stayed on board.”

Coraline looked at him, aghast.

“How could you say that? He was a good man, honest and kind and you just want him to die, falling to his death with no one there to catch him?”

Cora’s word’s felt like a slap in the face.

She seemed to realise it too, because she was just reaching out, her eyes alarmed and expression so far beyond apologetic, when someone else interrupted the both of them.

“Captain Rogers is right in his assessment of Dr Banner, Miss Quinn. Of all the losses in the attack, his was the most fortunate.”

Cora didn’t have time to gape this time, because she was already moving, her mind clear in its ice-white rage, till her hand was around Director Fury’s throat and she was lifting, lifting far more than she should have been able to if she was normal, if they hadn’t made her abnormal, as she pressed him up against the wall.

Her hand around his throat tightened as she felt the wings shoot outwards again, rising up around her.  Her eyes burnt with the anger she could feel in every fibre, every bit of bone and metal and skin that made up her being. Her mouth tasted of the rage as she hissed:

“Start talking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know not everything got answered in this chapter, and honestly at first I wanted it all to be clarified here, but it was getting long and I didn’t want to lose the impact of any of the scenes in this part ( especially between Cora and Steve) so I will make the tentative promise that more will be revealed next time. At least Fury certainly will have to start spilling, if he values his vocal chords.   
> Thank you again for sticking around, and for reviewing, bookmarking, leaving kudos etc.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new update, and though there was a wait between them ( as per usual) I feel like the length of this one should make up for it, if not for the fact that it is finally ‘secrets revealed’ time.  
> 17 Word pages later and hopefully you will all be satisfied with what I have been working towards up until this point. This chapter is a turning point in many respects for Cora’s character and the plot going forward, so hopefully it is to all of your likings and you don’t get too mad at the brief history interlude you have to work through first!  
> Many thanks to all that have reviewed, favourited, followed etc since the last update. I am going to make my best effort to reply to you all tomorrow, so chapter 21 reviews will get a response more swiftly than in normal scheduled programming if you review before then ( hint hint). For those of you who haven’t received a reply from me before, I tend to write them when I am next uploading a chapter so there is something of a delay period in responses.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.  
> Enjoy!

**_4 th July 1995: Cambridgeshire, UK. _ **

Marcus Quinn cursed as his most recent Styrofoam coffee cup succeeded in its beside table space jostling, sending its empty predecessors to the linoleum floor below.

Too many cups of coffee. Too many sleepless nights to necessitate them.

Across the room his wife stirred from a cricked-neck attempt at snoozing. They had been grateful for the camp bed at first; it made it easier to rotate shifts so that neither had to spend every moment awake and waiting. Now though, nearing two weeks in, the comfort of closeness felt on the first days was shifting to an unease of worrying that this would become the new normal.

Coraline hadn’t woken up.

They hadn’t been expecting it, not at first. Those first days, the worst days, they had been thankful enough that she was breathing (even with help from a tube down her throat). They had spent hours then, watching the machines and trusting their promises of stability more than anything the doctors were saying.

After a week though, the dread had started to collect in the corners of the room.

The scans, so positive at first, were beginning to sour. The breaks were more serious, the planned open reduction and internal fixation couldn’t guarantee the stability it had first promised. The damage to her rib, though not severe in itself, was threatening the integrity of her left lung. The broken arm was a minor issue, but the brain damage sustained by the blast force was potentially more serious. All of it was dependent on waiting. None of it sounded like the quick fix the Quinn family had first been presented with.

By the beginning of week two, their daughter had her name placed within the same sentence as ‘hospice’.

They had clutched her extra tight that night. For the most part they had tried to remain positive while in her room, just in case she really could hear them beneath the spider web of wires, but on that evening Marcus had let his wife sob. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference anyhow.

“Cora?” Penelope Quinn’s voice cracked in the hospital air. Everything was dry here. Dry and sterile and growing staler by the day.

“It was nothing, Pen,” Marcus hushed her. “I just dropped the cups.”

“Oh…I thought…”

Penny didn’t finish her sentence.

“I know, pet,” Marcus abandoned his efforts to stomach another cup of the liquid nothingness the canteen called coffee and crossed to his wife, open armed.

“Mr and Mrs Quinn,” A voice interrupted them from the doorway.

Both turned with trepidation. Somewhere in the latter half of the second week they had gone from ‘Cora’s Mummy and Daddy’ to the names you’d use if you were giving condolences. Despite the fact that their daughter was right there in front of them, every conversation starting in that way raised the hairs on their necks.

“Yes,” Marcus sighed as he looked up.

It wasn’t a doctor in the doorway.

Instead of scrubs and Janus-faced smiles, the woman at the door was unapologetically plain. Her outfit was work appropriate but not showy, and her expression was devoid of either false hope or unbridled pessimism.

But despite her refreshing appearance, she still wasn’t a doctor.

“What do you want?” Marcus’ voice was gruff, surprising his wife at his side.

“I’m here to talk about your daughter,” The woman responded calmly. Her accent was crisp, but still British. Penny couldn’t help but think that is contained a depth far beyond the simple authority her suit gave her.

“Whatever it is you have to say, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Marcus!” Penny turned to look properly at her husband and found him bristling.

“They’re going to say it was her fault, Pen, as if they shouldn’t have cleared the bunkers when the war was over instead of messing around in European politics.”

Penny went to pacify her husband but he hadn’t finished as he directed his attention back to the woman in the doorway.

“You’re from the government aren’t you? Or the police or Ministry of Defence or something. Well you ain’t getting anything from us, from our little girl. Maybe she shouldn’t have wandered off but you sure as hell should have bloody well done your job to make it safe for her to play wherever she wants. Treating the bloody English countryside like a bloody minefield, as if we hadn’t won the War and all the bloody others that followed it. If anything we should be accosting you, you miserable bags of-”

“I’m not here to blame your daughter,” The woman cut him off before Penny could.

“Then we’d appreciate it if you would leave us alone,” Penny responded tiredly, her attention already back to the beeps and whistles of the machines by her child.

“Mrs Quinn, I am offering to save her.”

Penny could only gasp. Marcus on the other hand…

“Get out.”

“Mr Quinn, I don’t think you heard me, I can-”

“I heard you. Now get out. We don’t need any more of your pandering…we’ve had enough false hope.”

Marcus’s voice caught then and he looked down in an attempt at regaining composure.

“I don’t intend to bring you false hope, Mr Quinn. Your daughter’s injuries are severe. If she wakes up she will likely lose the use of her legs and risks brain damage to an extent the doctors here cannot fully predict. I would not bring you any element of hope if I didn’t know the severity of your situation, and my ability to do something about it.”

Penny crossed the room to her daughter’s bedside, taking her limp hand between her own as she did every time a doctor asked for another sample or another scan.

“Who exactly are you?” She said softly as she watched her daughter sleep on.

“I’m with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

“That’s a whole lot of words without saying anything,” Marcus retorted gruffly.

“We are an agency, tasked with a duty of care to the planet in the face of…unprecedented challenges. Much of what we do is classified Mr Quinn, so I am afraid I cannot be as direct with you as I am sure we would both appreciate. What I can say though is that we were partially responsible for what happened to Coraline, and we wish to rectify this situation.”

“This situation,” Marcus hissed, “Is my little girl’s life getting blown to dust because of whatever mistake you made. I don’t care who you are, you did this,” He gestures wildly before a sob forces him into the nearest chair. “You did this.”

The woman sighed as she surveyed both parents.

“I…I have children too. I daren’t imagine what you are going through, what I would do in your place.”

Neither Marcus nor Penny reacted as they heard the clasp of a bag unclip. The documents the woman handed them however made them first stutter breaths in and then finally look up.

“That’s…that’s not possible,” Penny eventually managed at the same time as Marcus exclaimed: “That’s inhuman.”

“It is both of those things,” The woman acquiesced before her resolve hardened. “But it is also the one chance we have of ensuring your daughter’s future.”

The parents stared again at the documents, trying and failing to digest just what it was suggesting, not just about their little girl, but about the world she had been and would continue to grow up in. A world that had just gotten a whole lot wider.

“Why is this even an option,” Marcus eventually managed. “What possible purpose could this achieve, and…and what would it mean for Coraline?”

The S.H.I.E.L.D agent smiled inwardly at the desolation moulding to hope in the man’s words. Her response wouldn’t matter now, these were desperate people faced with a desperate plan. But still, she chose her words carefully. It may not matter to the Quinn parents, but this was something beyond them, something extending to the girl on the bed she was promising to save.

“There was an idea…”

**aAa**

**_20 th July 1948: Soviet Occupation Zone, East Germany, to the West of Berlin. _ **

  
The blockade had been in effect for less than a month, and already Peter Lehmann’s life had been complicated.

They had assumed, of course. As soon as West Germany had announced the new currency those in the East had expected some kind of Soviet retaliation. And in a way the blockade hadn’t been much of a surprise. The intention to force the capitulation of West Berlin to the Soviet zone was not a hidden one.

“We are warning both you and the population of Berlin that we shall apply economic and administrative sanctions that will lead to the circulation in Berlin exclusively of the currency of the Soviet occupation zone,” The Soviet representative to the West had said.

And a blockade certainly sounded  efficient. Without access to Soviet routes, the Western powers couldn’t transport food or goods to their parts of annexed Berlin, deep within Eastern Germany.  Western oversight had never attained a written assurance of rite of passage through the Soviet zone, and so not only could East Germany close the rail, road and sea links to West Berlin with logistical ease, but they could also do so without legal ramifications.

When the vast outnumbering of Soviet troops to American or British became apparent, the blockade’s initial success became even more of an event of celebration.

But there had clearly been some scrambling from the Western side beyond a simple retaliatory blockade as was put in place on the first days. Because on the 26th June the aeroplanes started flying. Peter didn’t recognise the planes themselves, and the echo of war made the force of habit to duck and cover more urgent than any urge to look up, but he heard them near constantly as they droned their way to the West Berlin runways.

The East German press ridiculed it of course. ‘The futile attempts of the Americans to save face and to maintain their untenable position in Berlin’ the papers had proclaimed.

But Peter heard the planes and tended to block out the Soviet reports that denied them.

 So, apparently, did his son.

Klaus was seven and so astutely aware of the operation happening beyond the borders of Western occupied Berlin that sometimes his father wondered quite how worried he should be about the renowned Soviet walls with ears.

That worry was particularly relevant now, he commiserated, as he crossed the street under the cover of darkness and made his way towards Tempelhof Airport.

Apparently one of the planes flying supplies into West Berlin was also dropping chocolate. Peter wasn’t sure how Klaus had heard about it, but upon the seven year old’s insistence that some chocolate had been dropped on their side of the fence, Peter was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible while making his way to said fence in the hope that dawn’s break in a few hours would herald enough of the candy to make his son smile.

If it would also stop him from filling the position of Western collaborator in the neighbourhood then that would be good too.

Peter heard the drone of another engine as he crossed between burnt out buildings.

Germany had not been rebuilt after the war. There were effort of course, but Peter shared the belief of much of the German population that the occupying forces were rather more focussed on each other than on those they were claiming to be protecting. Some muttered that Germany would best be left alone rather than in occupied hands. Others did more than mutter, but as far as Peter saw it, neither rebuilt the bombed out shells that both commiserated, so what was the point in getting angry.

Getting by was all that was important. Getting by and not getting caught.

The droning got louder which made Peter break his habit and look skywards. Hearing the planes at this hour was unusual in itself. Hearing one so close, when considering the strict regulations of Western flight paths, was even more so.

Dawn was just beginning to break behind him as he walked eastwards, bathing the ruins in front of him in the orange- grey mix of sunlight and shadow.

Peter didn’t see it at first. Then, when he did, he didn’t believe it.

There was something flying overhead, far lower than a plane and far quieter too. The light distorted it, but if he squinted he could see twin jets of blue fire from the back of the craft. And if he could see the engines, then something certainly wasn’t right.

That feeling of trepidation intensified as he watched the wings of the craft fold inwards as the machine went into a dive.

No…not a machine…

“Mein Gott,” Peter staggered backwards as the _thing_ landed in front of him.

The person, because that is what it was however unbelievable, shook out their shoulders as they turned to face him.

Peter watched in both horror and fascination as the gleam of metal wings against their back rippled in the dawn light.

“Tempelhof?” The angel called out.

How strange, Peter thought as his knees turned to jelly. He hadn’t expected a Holy proclamation to mention his own destination. Or to be in such terribly accented German.

“Tempelhof?” The angel tried again.

Peter’s feet moved without his permission, his fascinating winning out over his fear. Up close the angel was not as impressive. He wore flying goggles, thick boots that glowed as he bounced from foot to foot, and was that a jumpsuit?

“Wo ist der Flughafen” The American in front of Peter asked tiredly as he pushed the goggles up his forehead.

 _Where is the airport?_ The question was simple enough, but it took Peter a good few seconds to formulate an answer. The words just wouldn’t come.

In the end he pointed.

“Osten.”

“Ah,” The man with wings made a big show of smiling and offering thumbs up. Clearly ‘East’ was enough of a direction for him.

Peter expected the man to fly away then, and probably for himself to wake up back in bed with a few minutes to contemplate a particularly bizarre dream before making breakfast. Instead, the ‘angel’ rummaged in a pouch attached to his jumpsuit till he found what he was looking for, brandishing it with an ‘Aha!’

“For you.”

 Peter didn’t understand much English, but he took the offering nonetheless. The American smiled again, before putting a gloved finger to his lips in a caricatured display of requested silence.

Peter nodded.

Dawn swept more rays over the bombed out building. With one final over-exaggerated hush motion, the American readjusted the goggles and made a show of shooing Peter back. The German was all too happy to comply, but waited long enough to see the wings stretch out and a hop-skip-jump motion send the man rocketing skyward.

The engine drone picked up again. Peter didn’t look up this time, fearing a final glance at the impossible made real would only further turn his brain to the gibberish it was threatening to become.

Instead he turned on his heels and began the trudge homeward. Klaus would have to wish for chocolate from now on. His father would not be returning to Tempelhof while there was still a chance of another encounter like the one he was only partially convinced he had witnessed.

He was almost the whole way home before he remembered the American’s gift.

Ducking into a nearby alley, Peter unwrapped the object from its fabric layer.

‘Hershey’s’ the bar proudly proclaimed.

 _Of course,_ Peter chuckled inwardly as he continued on.

_Die Schokolade._

**aAa**

**_29 th May 1972 : Forest, near Play Ku, South Vietnam_ **

The air was thick with the smell of smoke.

They hadn’t bombed this particular area yet, though naturally it was in the plans, but still the arid stench of burning vegetation drifted. He’d had to replace the air filters twice already and he’d only been stationed at Da Nang for a week. Clearly the labs back in Brooklyn hadn’t been expecting this level of destruction.

 _Or perhaps they had but didn’t care enough to do anything about it_.

Michael banked slowly as he scanned the forest beneath him. This was his fifth patrol in daylight and he still wasn’t any closer to finding what he was looking for. If he was honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what that even was. Aerial reconnaissance was a key component in this kind of a war, but even with the technology granted to the US army by Project Eyrie, none of the operatives were getting any closer to spotting Vietcong fighters, let alone the separate targets S.H.I.E.L.D had them looking for. All he saw was trees. Endless, endless trees.

A sudden light from below him had him scrabbling to gain altitude, before a closer inspection revealed it to be nothing more than the reflection of Vietnam’s reddening sun off of the metal of his wings. Michael knew himself lucky to be so far removed from the conflict down on the ground, but the horrors heard in training did little to stem his nerves now he was finally in the warzone.

Scolding himself for being so jumpy, Michael banked again, this time into the glow of the sunset, and consulted the panel on his wrist to find the best coordinates back to base. At first when he had done this his flight had faltered, as if his brain couldn’t focus on doing two things at once, but now his wings continued beating as he set his course and turned for home.

The sound of engines brought him out of autopilot mode. Of course they weren’t uncommon – Project Rolling Thunder had been the first of many bombing raids and since its commencement the Vietnam skies had hardly been short of planes – but the sound was still jarring.

_Flights were meant to be rerouted when Eyrie operatives were on manoeuvres._

Looking up wasn’t possible when flying: the suit’s constrictions meant to protect against muscle fatigue induced flight cutout also reduced movement to looking left, right, and down. Nor could you continue flying upside down – not for want of trying back on the training grounds of upstate New York. They’d all walked away sore from that particular experiment.

Instead, Michael twisted his shoulders into a roll. Once, twice, three dizzying passes later and he still couldn’t see the plane. Orienting himself again, he checked his wrist panel, this time for altitude.

12,000 feet. Lower than any plane, but still just enough wiggle room to….

Michael twisted again enough to have his back to the ground. Sure enough, he felt the snap of wind against his wings as they hit the air currents beneath him like a solid surface. Wincing at the whiplash, he tilted his head downwards and went into a dive.

It wasn’t perfect, and it certainly wasn’t procedure, but if he reported an unauthorised plane in his airspace without so much as a silhouette ID then a wrap on the knuckles for poor flying technique would be the least of his problems.

For the first few seconds the sky above was still empty. Michael was just preparing to come out of the dive when the shadow crossed his face.

His goggles were collecting ash particles as he squinted behind them for the shadow’s source. It took him another few seconds to work out that that wasn’t right, and by then the heat on his back and the beeping of his oxygen belt alerting to a compromised filter had done the rest of the work for him to let him know something was on fire.

More specifically, the forest was on fire.

Michael processed this information with just enough time to remember the shadow before the napalm hit him. In his panic, because this was panic pure and burning, his gloved hand hit the transponder for his radio, but it wasn’t like that did anything because all Base got was his screaming as his dive became freefall and the fire smoked closer.

Base kept the radio connection till the heat melted the transponder. The Eyrie Project leader kept Michael’s file open till the wing metal scrap had been recovered from the burnt out remains of the forest. Then it, and the rest of the project, was shelved.

**aAa**

**April 4 th 2012, The Bridge, S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier **

Coraline finished the final page of the file with the satisfied feeling that came from any completed academic reading. Absentmindedly she tapped the table to her right, reaching for the cup of tea she always kept on hand for lengthy research tasks. Feeling an absence where her mug should be, and then the warmth of someone else’s hand over hers, she looked up with a start.

Steve looked back at her, his eyes sympathetic as his hand squeezed hers.

And that was when Coraline remembered that the reports she had been reading weren’t just another history assignment. That they were about her past, her future, and everything in between. And that not only was the comfort of Steve’s hand apt, but it was also something she really, really needed.

Slowly, she let a breath out from between clenched teeth.

“That bad?” Steve asked softly.

“Certainly not good,” Coraline whispered in response.

Fury’s entrance drew the comfort from the room as hands retreated to laps and gazes got diverted, Cora’s to the table and Steve’s to the wall.

Fury himself stayed silent. Cora liked to think it was because of the pressure she had put on his vocal chords before Steve had managed to pry her fingers from the Director’s neck. She even afforded herself a small smirk to that end, before the arrival of Stark, and Fury’s expression when he turned to face them wiped it from her face.

“Ooh, recently unclassified files,” Stark reached across for Cora’s pile of papers. She stopped him with a glare, but added a hissed ‘Back off!’ for good measure.

Tony raised his hands in surrender as means of a response, the look in his eyes betraying the shock his joking demeanour didn’t permit in his actions.

“No need to get your wings in a twist,” He said airily as he took a seat out of smacking distance from the now bristling historian. Only Steve had witnessed the wrath that was the woman seated across from him in all its unleashed glory, but Fury’s brief trip to medical and the cough that accompanied it was enough to get rumour spreading on the ship. Besides, a happy rumour was something everyone needed right about now…

“These were in Phil Coulson's jacket,” Fury broke the silence.  “Guess he never did get you to sign them.”

The cards skidded across the table in a fluttering of soggy cardstock as Fury scattered them.

Cora let out an audible gasp as her eyes scanned and failed to fully take in what she was seeing. Across from her Steve picked one up with a grimace. Cora barely processed this.

No one had told her. But equally she hadn’t asked.

How could she not have asked? She could count the number of friendly faces on this ship in one hand. There had been three. Banner had dropped it to two, though the feel of Fury’s throat under her hand had somewhat softened the blow that had caused in her chest. But Coulson?

“ _Save me an opening night ticket to your exhibition”_

The memory made swallowing difficult behind the lump in her throat. Glancing up again only added to the historian’s guilt. Stark’s grief was quiet – hidden in his eyes and the way he clenched his jaw. Steve wore it obviously, emblazoned on his face and in the slight tremble of his hand as he stared at his own image soaked scarlet.

What claim did Cora have to be grieving? Coulson had been friendly yes, but she had barely known him. Steve – though she presumed not having any more contact than her with the man – had the weight of his own legacy to shoulder; a guilt Cora couldn’t even begin to imagine. And Stark – the glistening behind steely eyes told Cora more than she needed to know about the relationship he had had to the man now memorialised in collectible cards.

Cora bit her lip as Fury continued.

 _I don’t deserve to be grieving_ , she thought as she tasted blood. _I’m a mess enough as it is; don’t add melodrama to the mix._

“We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming.”

Silence prevailed as the Director paused for breath. Cora kept her gaze to her file as she focussed on the copper in her mouth and the repression in her mind.

“We were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract.”

Fury’s concession had her looking up, which forced her to cross gazes with Steve. Neither of them fully looked at each other. The space just next to Steve seemed like a far less emotionally fraught place to concentrate on.

“I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier.”

Fury paused again, perhaps expecting a reaction but getting nothing.

“There was an idea, Stark knows this, called The Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could.”

The breath caught in Cora’s throat.

“ _She is an Initiative member, confirm?”_

That was what the man, what Joe had said to her in the hallway. Before her thoughts could switch to what happened next, to blood and lies and sobbing, Cora closed off the memory and focussed instead on that one line.

Her file hadn’t included anything about an ‘Avengers Initiative’. It had mentioned the project she had been _activated_ as a part of – even thinking about _that_ word made the historian shudder in her seat. Project Eyrie certainly fitted the bill of ‘remarkable people’, and seeing as she was living proof of it not being decommissioned in the 1970s Cora rationalised that it would not be too much of a stretch to presume it fitted the ‘group’ part of Fury’s definition either. At least, she really hoped she wasn’t the only one…

But to be part of this, a project within a project. Cora didn’t want to think what that would mean, what Coulson’s reaction to her plea to be able to help were really referencing when he directed her to the room and the man shot while guarding it.

A flurry of movement to her left accompanied Fury’s quiet:

“Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes.”

Cora forced herself out of her thoughts to witness Tony’s quick departure, even has her mind kept returning on loop to that phrase: ‘Initiative Member, Initiative Member, Initiative Member’.

“Well, it's an old fashioned notion,” Fury finished his speech as he watched Stark depart.

The bridge maintained its grip on its occupants’ tongues for a minute, then two. Steve didn’t move. Fury didn’t move.

Cora let out a shaky breath and stood.

Instead of leaving, she crossed in front of the table and towards the control panel. It took her a minute to spy what she is looking for, but with a quiet ‘aha’ she crossed  back to Fury, a tablet in hand.

“Log me in,” She requested quietly.

Fury stared at her, so she pushed the tablet into his chest with a glare.

“Log me with the highest clearance you can think of.  I want access to all the files, not just the ones you handpicked to keep me happy.”

Steve had stood by this point, wavering on the edge of her vision as he clearly weighed up whether he needed to intervene again. Cora backed off slightly to show him she wasn’t about to throttle the Director ( _again_ ), but her determination remained steadfast.

“Alternatively you could just tell me why S.H.I.E.L.D decided to implant an exoskeleton worth of metal into an eight year old when the project necessitating it was shelved in the 70s, but you’ve been awfully cagey about speaking so far so I figured written access might suit you better.”

Fury sighed as he took the tablet from her, tapping on its screen till it produced a muted ‘ding’. Cora gestured for it back, but instead he met her gaze.

“Project Eyrie failed when too many people had access to the technology we developed. Considering the context, we thought it best to remove the temptation from the world stage till the world got a little less Cold. After the Wall fell, and new threats started to rear their heads, it was decided to reactivate the programme, quietly this time, in case of events like these where Eyrie members could be of service.”

“How many others?” Cora asked quietly.

“60 were selected. 8 responded negatively to the initial procedure. 4 were withdrawn before reaching adulthood. Of the 48 remaining, 30 were seconded from military service to S.H.I.E.L.D training once Stark hit the headlines – if an independent party was claiming hegemony of the skies, we wanted our guys ready to claim it back.”

“And the other 18?”

“All were brought into the programme once Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S was initiated to study the Tesseract. You were read in later due to your work contracts in Sokovia.”

 “Wait,” Steve interjected, reminded both members of the face off that they weren’t alone. “If Cora was being brought in for the Tesseract project why was she tutoring me?”

“It was a good excuse,” Cora answered softly, not taking her gaze from Fury. “If nothing became of the project for another year, I would still be in New York and under S.H.I.E.L.D monitoring.”

“And when the project experienced…glitches…” Fury confirmed,” You were extracted from your position, sent to basic training and had the final modifications made to ensure the Eyrie Technology was operational.”

“My legs,” Cora gasped in realisation. “ That’s why I couldn’t feel them when I woke up in my flat. I’d been…operated on?”

“Yes,” Fury replied plainly. “The Eyrie Technology requires large amounts of synthesised nerve wiring, which had been placed in a series of operations since you were 8. This final procedure ensured the connections were strong.”

“Why didn’t you just tell her this?” Steve stepped closer to Cora as he saw her clenched hands begin to shake.

“At the same time as Quinn was entering basic training, those who would have become her senior officers in the Project were being buried under my research facility in the Mojave Desert.”

Cora gulped.

“So, of the 60 original members, how many are left?”

“40, of which 38 are being picked out of the rubble at the Mojave, another is receiving treatment…elsewhere… and then there is you. The proverbial thorn in my side from day one.”

“Yes, I will make sure next time I am inducted into a paramilitary programme against my will that I mind my manners,” Cora retorted, her words biting but her tone defeatist. “Is that everything?”

“It is all you have been cleared to be read into. I am sure I do not need to remind you of the highly classified nature of all of this.”

“Go to hell Fury,” Coraline turned to leave before pausing.

Steve wasn’t quick enough to stop the swing, but he couldn’t lie and say he wasn’t a little satisfied at the sound of the punch hitting home and Fury’s nose crunching under the impact.  

Cora shook her hand out with a cry of pain as her knuckles throbbed. Seeing the way Fury held his hand to his nose though brought a vindictive smile to her face.

“I imagine your Avengers Initiative has a screening process for cohesion and discipline. Consider that punch the evidence you need to know I will not be a good fit.”

**aAa**

 

By the time Steve had found her she was on her third bowl of porridge.

“That is a lot of oatmeal,” Steve muttered as he slumped into the seat opposite her.

The canteen was empty but for the both of them. Steve, on noticing this, allowed his terse position to drop as he sighed into his seat. Coraline, having been in the canteen since she had stormed from the bridge, remained bunched up in her own chair as she shovelled down oats on autopilot.

“My parents always said to start a big day with a good breakfast,” Cora said between mouthfuls. “Of course they also said the doctor’s that fixed my legs were from Great Ormond Street but I guess the truth is subjective when it comes to S.H.I.E.L.D interference.”

Finishing the bowl, she didn’t give Steve time to respond, knowing that if she did he would say something sympathetic and the thin wall keeping her from breaking down would shatter completely.

“You spoke to Stark?”

“Yes,” Steve’s response was curt, and a quick glance upwards confirmed Coraline’s suspicions that the man across from her was trying his best to shoulder the weight piling onto him.

“And?” Cora probed.

“And we are heading for New York. Not S.H.I.E.L.D. Stark, once his suit is fixed and Romanoff if she’s up for it. Hopefully Thor will catch us up.”

“How long till wheels up?” Cora stacked her bowls as she made to stand.

Steve’s hand on her arm made her pause.

“I can’t ask you to do this, Cora.”

Cora tilted her head in confusion.  “What are you talking about?”

“We were trained for this. War and death and danger. I can’t ask you to follow us into that. I want…I want you safe.”

“Steve,” She breathed out as she tried to compile her feelings into words. “I…I can’t just stop, not now. If Fury is being honest for once in his life, then I was made for this. I may not have chosen it, may not have made the life changing decision, but I can’t risk innocent lives just because I am angry or anxious or scared or…or…”

Tears tracked down Cora’s cheeks as she pinched the bridge of her nose with a muffled: “Dammit”.

After taking a few short breaths, she sniffed loudly and met Steve’s gaze.

“You are heading into the fray as Captain America. I don’t have a fancy name, or an outfit, or really any experience beyond what I’ve read in textbooks. But I will fight with you, with the Steve who writes Post-it Notes and always has a snarky comeback and cares more deeply and broadly than anyone I have ever met. Let me head into the fray with that man, and we can work out the rest once this is all over.”

Steve held her gaze, his hand still on her arm as they sat. After the first minute ticked over, Cora squinted her eyes, trying to look past the blue of Steve’s eyes to what he was looking at, what was causing the ghost of fear in his pupils.

“What are you thinking?” She asked at a whisper.

Steve didn’t answer, even as his hand brushed up her and then down again, the soothing ministration as light as air against the bare skin of her forearm.

But just like that the moment was over.

Steve was sitting rigid again, and Cora was free to stand and deposit her empty bowls on the nearest clearing tray before heading for the door.

“I’ll meet you in the hangar bay in ten minutes?” She queried.

“Uh, yeah, yes. 10 minutes.”

“Ok,” She made to leave, before pausing and turning back to the man still sat stiffly in the empty canteen. “Oh, and Steve. If I get to the hangar and find you’ve left without me, I will throw myself off of this godforsaken flying ship and see how fast Eyrie tech can get me to New York under my own steam. Got it?”

“I’ve got it, Coraline,” Steve said with a small smile.

That was good enough for Cora. She had somewhere else to be.

**aAa**

They hadn’t cleared up the blood. 

Cora tried not to think about it.

Just as Coulson had said, her retinal scan opened the door that Joe had guarded.

_Don’t think about him. Don’t think about the noise. Don’t think about the blood…the blood…the blood._

The door opened and Cora was stumbling through it, gulping for breath as she slumped to her knees.

She had 10 minutes. This was meant to be in and out.

_Get it together, Cora._

The door had latched behind her, so when she finally managed to look up her eyes had to adjust to the darkness.

Staggering to her feet activated the motion sensors though, and so she went from squinting on the floor to shielding her eyes from the glare once standing.

There wasn’t much to see.

Directly across from the door was the suit. _Just as she had expected._

Her speech to Steve may have not mentioned it ( and even in the few minutes it took for her to reach _the_ hallway she was already cursing herself for how tacky it had sounded) but the files Fury had given to her had come with pictures as well as schematics, so she had expected her omission to turn to a lie the minute she opened the door.

The material was softer than she had imagined. Not soft like fabric, which was something of a relief – no way was she going to wear something made of t-shirt material into a battle orchestrated by a God. But it was still softer than Kevlar, and thinner too. More aerodynamic she supposed.

Even with the light of the room she couldn’t tell if it was black or just a very dark blue. As she lifted it from its hanger, it slunk around her arm in a swathe of shadow, save for the reflective bands crisscrossing the waist and cuffing the arms and legs.

“This is going to be tight,” She thumbed the sleeve fabric absentmindedly as she tried not to think about how close fitting it was going to be. _God she missed suit trousers and shirts right about now._

Dumping the suit on the floor, Cora moved for the next items.

The undershirts and accompanying leggings were fairly standard, all things considered, so they quickly joined the suit in its pile. The hood however, nestled as it was in its own compartment adjacent to the suit area, deserved far larger scrutiny.

It was made of the same material as the suit, and was really more of a balaclava than a hood. It reminded Cora of the kind of camping and multi-purpose snood her parents had always manhandled onto her whenever they’d attempted a more ambitious walk through the National Parks of her youth. Where it differed however was in the mask, which though still light held the tell-tale weight of a plastic air filter that Cora presumed, when worn, would suction around her mouth and nose and either filter air or supply it.

A quick glance at the tool belt settled to the right of the main display didn’t hold many answers. Perhaps it did both?

 _Worry about that another time, Coraline,_ Cora chided mentally.

When she had first seen the photos – of a man dressed in goggles and a ghostbusters outfit (or at least a 1948 approximation) Cora had pondered the merits of having the nose covered as well as the mouth. Surely being able to smell was important in the reconnaissance missions Project Eyrie was intended for. What if there had been fire?

The report from 1972 had sought to confirm this suspicion as being of merit, but as she had reached her own files and the schematics dated from the 21st century, any query had been melted away.

Scientific opinion varied on if birds had a sense of smell. S.H.I.E.L.D, it appeared, had come down on the side of ‘no’, and so when adding the chemical compound to her brain that stimulated her senses of sight and hearing, they had also cut the sense of smell.

It was only for the first flight – some kind of failsafe measure in case she had been activated before accessing her suit and the tech within it that would become her eyes and ears in any future operations. But according to the schematics within the file, the chemical compound could be replaced by means of a simple shot, and so the nose remained covered in the masks and the assumption remained that if something was burning you’d notice before it burnt you too.

 _This time_ , Cora thought begrudgingly as she dropped the hood onto the slowly amassing pile and tried not to think about Michael from the file and the way in which his own tech failed him.

The gloves were as standard as she imagined fancy superhero gloves could be. There were more buttons than she could place functions for, having only heard about the radio button from the incident in 1972,  but that was another thing to figure out later.

The boots, on the other hand, required more immediate attention.

They were chunky, reminding Cora more of ski boots than any kind of functional shoe. Realising she had stalled long enough in inspecting everything, Cora quickly shed her layers in favour of the base layers and shadow suit before sitting on the floor to put on the boots.

Just like ski boots, thick metal straps secured her feet in place at her ankle and across the instep. Differing from them, the same straps clicked into place going up her leg to just below the knee. All in all they fitted snugly, and didn’t weigh as much as Cora had been expecting. Standing again she felt more of the weight, but her attentions were more drawn to the feel of the circular disks at the heel of the boot, the size of which pushed her height up a few inches as she jumped up and down to test out the fit. Adding the gloves to her ensemble by means of further metal bands clipping them to her sleeves started a whirring in the shoes as the motors started running.

Cora wasn’t entirely sure how these worked either, but it was going to have to be something tested quite literally on the fly because the schematics she had skim read had given the strong indication that the propulsion force of the micro-engines in her shoes was really not appropriate for inside testing.

Although she positioned the hood correctly – attaching some wires at its base that threaded down the nape of her neck and into the suit mechanics – Cora didn’t pull the hood up. Instead she let it lie like a bandana around her neck, her hair tied into a hasty braid resting next to it.

The goggles were the final step, and one that somehow pushed the entire procedure from surreal to downright ridiculous. As she scrunched and unscrunched her eyes into focus behind the light blue tinged lenses, Cora half wished for a mirror, just so she could laugh at how silly she must look.

A quick glance at one of the various word panels that had started to scan across her vision though had her pulling the goggles down around her neck and darting from the room.

She had almost reached the hangar, boots clunking as she tried and failed to work out how to run in them, when the breeze on her back made her skid to a stop.

She didn’t need to see to know that the suit had two large slits down the back.

 _For the wings_ , her mind helpfully supplied, just in case she’d somehow managed to forget that little nugget of information in all the kerfuffle.

“As if” She muttered to herself as she ducked into an engineering lab just off the hangar bay and stole a mustard yellow flight jacket from the back of someone’s chair.

Shrugging the jacket on, Cora entered the hangar bay just in time to see Steve, Natasha and a man she didn’t recognise commandeer a jet. Steve noticed her as he made way for the plane’s two other occupants to buckle in. His look of complete shock was the perfect cover Cora needed to jog the final distance to the plane and hop on board. Just in case he hadn’t any last minute ideas of leaving her behind…

Cora watched Steve’s shock double now that he was close enough to see just what she was wearing. He continued to gape as she clunked her way across the jet, acknowledging Natasha and the unfamiliar man with a nod as she did so, and then settled into a seat across from his standing position.

The jet whirred into action.  Steve grabbed onto a ceiling handle for balance, still staring.

Self-consciously, Cora fiddled with the strap of her goggles, visible as they were around her neck, before taking a breath and looking up with mirth in her eyes.

 “I may have lied about not having an outfit.”

From the cockpit Cora heard a snort. Then, the sound of Stark over the radio and the force of the jet picking up speed drowned out any other thoughts of joviality.

“Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward,” Cora muttered as New York pin pricked the skyline far ahead. “All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred.”

_Into the valley of Death._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been the longest chapter of the fic so far, and hopefully one both which answered questions and brought about some new ones too. Hopefully you stuck around through it, and are as excited as I am to see what happens next.  
> Cora’s quote is from the opening Stanza of ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, memorialising the aforementioned charge during the Crimean War at the Battle of Balaclava, October 1854. The poem was published in December of that year.  
> As always please do let me know what you think. Any thoughts, comments, questions, screams of frustration, theories, unintelligible yelling, is appreciated.


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